Nonlinear gliding stability and control for vehicles with hydrodynamic forcing

This paper presents Lyapunov functions for proving the stability of steady gliding motions for vehicles with hydrodynamic or aerodynamic forces and moments. Because of lifting forces and moments, system energy cannot be used as a Lyapunov function candidate. A Lyapunov function is constructed using a conservation law discovered by Lanchester in his classical work on phugoid-mode dynamics of an airplane. The phugoid-mode dynamics, which are cast here as Hamiltonian dynamics, correspond to the slow dynamics in a multi-time-scale model of a hydro/aerodynamically-forced vehicle in the longitudinal plane. Singular perturbation theory is used in the proof of stability of gliding motions. As an intermediate step, the simplifying assumptions of Lanchester are made rigorous. It is further shown how to design stabilizing control laws for gliding motions using the derived function as a control Lyapunov function and how to compute the corresponding regions of attraction.     

基于神经网络的拍翅式微型飞行器姿态控制

对于拍翅式微型飞行器姿态的控制,提出了一个基于BP神经网络和平均力矩的控制方案. 每个拍动周期结束后,依据姿态误差通过神经网络控制器来确定迎角的调整量, 微型飞行器在下一周期获得所需的姿态控制平均力矩. 对控制系统进行了仿真,仿真结果表明该系统具有鲁棒性.     

机动再入飞行器自适应自动驾驶仪设计

解决了机动再入飞行器在气动系数变化范围大和气动耦合严重等恶劣条件下的姿态和过载控制问题. 为了能充分利用飞行器可测量信息提高系统自适应能力, 提出了滚动通道状态方程参数辨识—级点配置—前馈补偿自适应控制和横向通道基于攻角反馈以过载为主控信号的变参数自适应控制的自动驾驶仪设计方法. 通过对某飞行器的制导控制系统仿真, 可以看出该自动驾驶仪使飞行器有很好的飞行性能.     

Modeling and attitude control analysis of a ducted-fan micro aerial vehicle

This paper deals with the aerodynamic modeling of a ducted fan Vertical TakeOff and Landing (VTOL) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and the problem of attitude stabilization when the vehicle is remotely controlled by a human pilot in presence of crosswind. The main aerodynamic elements, which are inherent to the presence of the duct and explain the flight dynamics of this kind of vehicle, are first presented. Then, an attitude control is designed from a linearization of the dynamic model around the hovering flight equilibrium. As the vehicle is axis-symmetric, the pitch and the roll dynamics have a similar expression. For this reason, the presentation is focused on the design of the pitch controller. Similar results can be directly deduced for the roll. Experiments, led on the HoverEye platform designed by Bertin Technologies, show that the proposed attitude control is sufficient to open a large secure flight envelope.     

A skew-symmetric property of rigid-body systems

The configuration space for the attitude of a vehicle can be modeled as SO(3), namely the rotation matrix group. This work investigates the globally valid dynamics of natural Lagrangian systems and gyroscopic systems with configuration space including SO(3). The dynamics is derived by using the global representations of jet bundles of SO(3). A skew-symmetric property associated with the systems can be then established. Such property can be used in many applications such as the adaptive controller design.     

3D imaging application in the studies of micro air vehicles

3D techniques are increasingly used in aerospace industry to improve quality and performance of aircrafts. This paper presents a 3D imaging technique for studying the aerodynamic shape and flight performance of micro air vehicles. 3D stereoscopic vision, based upon stroboscopic imaging, was utilized to obtain the 3D information of the aircraft's flexible aerodynamic surface. The aircraft models with deformable aerodynamic shape were designed and tested in a purpose-built wind tunnel experimental environment. After calculation of SIFT feature points and subdivision of triangular meshes, deformable surface of the aircraft's aerodynamic shape was represented. The aircraft's 3D visualization was used for analyzing unsteady deformation in the aerodynamic shape under external airflow disturbances. The results, together with aerodynamic forces measured in the experiment, will be useful to improve the flight performance and disturbance resistance ability of micro air vehicles.     

Crew exploration vehicle (CEV) attitude control using a neural–immunology/memory network

This paper addresses the problem of the crew exploration vehicle (CEV) attitude control. CEVs are NASA's next-generation human spaceflight vehicles, and they use reaction control system (RCS) jet engines for attitude adjustment, which calls for control algorithms for firing the small propulsion engines mounted on vehicles. In this work, the resultant CEV dynamics combines both actuation and attitude dynamics. Therefore, it is highly nonlinear and even coupled with significant uncertainties. To cope with this situation, a neural–immunology/memory network is proposed. It is inspired by the human memory and immune systems. The control network does not rely on precise system dynamics information. Furthermore, the overall control scheme has a simple structure and demands much less computation as compared with most existing methods, making it attractive for real-time implementation. The effectiveness of this approach is also verified via simulation.     

Position control of a ducted fan VTOL UAV in crosswind

This paper describes a control strategy to stabilize the position of a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in crosswind despite unknown aerodynamic effects. The proposed approach overcomes the problem of gyroscopic coupling by taking advantage of both the structure of the thrust mechanism, which is made of two counter rotating propellers, and the control strategy which involves a decoupling of the yaw rate dynamics from the rest of the system dynamics. The controller is designed by means of backstepping techniques that allow the stabilization of the vehicle's position while online estimating the unknown aerodynamic effects.     

Backstepping Approach for Controlling a Quadrotor Using Lagrange Form Dynamics

The dynamics of a quadrotor are a simplified form of helicopter dynamics that exhibit the same basic problems of underactuation, strong coupling, multi-input/multi-output design, and unknown nonlinearities. Control design for the quadrotor is more tractable yet reveals corresponding approaches for helicopter and UAV control design. In this paper, a backstepping approach is used for quadrotor controller design. In contrast to most other approaches, we apply backstepping on the Lagrangian form of the dynamics, not the state space form. This is complicated by the fact that the Lagrangian form for the position dynamics is bilinear in the controls. We confront this problem by using an inverse kinematics solution akin to that used in robotics. In addition, two neural nets are introduced to estimate the aerodynamic components, one for aerodynamic forces and one for aerodynamic moments. The result is a controller of intuitively appealing structure having an outer kinematics loop for position control and an inner dynamics loop for attitude control. The control approach described in this paper is robust since it explicitly deals with unmodeled state-dependent disturbances and forces without needing any prior knowledge of the same. A simulation study validates the results obtained in the paper.     

Robust Gyro‐free Attitude Estimation for a Small Fixed‐wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

This paper proposes a backup attitude estimation scheme for small fixed‐wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the event of gyroscopic failure. The attitude is propagated in terms of 3 degrees‐of‐freedom (DoF) aircraft dynamics. The errors in attitude propagation are updated using indirect attitude information obtained from accelerations as sensed by onboard accelerometers and a global positioning system (GPS) receiver. In the event of gyroscopic failure, large uncertainties are introduced into the attitude propagation model. Such uncertainties in states and parameters are modeled as norm‐bound uncertainties and a discrete‐time robust extended Kalman filter (REKF) is implemented to estimate the attitude of the UAV.     

基于模糊控制的高超声速飞行器二阶滑模姿态控制

考虑高超声速飞行器飞行过程中气动参数变动导致的不确定,将模糊控制与二阶滑模控制相结合,形成自适应模糊二阶滑模控制器,用于控制高超声速飞行器姿态的飞行系统中.依据奇异摄动理论,设计快速和慢速双闭环系统控制角速率和姿态角.设计二阶滑模控制器用于有效地衰减抖振,同时对姿态角指令实现准确和快速跟踪.采用自适应模糊逻辑逼近高超声速飞行器动力学和运动学模型中的不确定部分,以对控制器进行有效补偿,基于Lyapunov稳定性理论,推导模糊规则参数的自适应律,确保整个闭环控制系统的稳定.仿真结果表明,所提出的高超声速飞行器的自适应模糊滑模控制系统能够有效抑制气动参数摄动的影响,对姿态角指令有较好的跟踪性能.     

A Control Approach for Thrust-Propelled Underactuated Vehicles and its Application to VTOL Drones

A control approach is proposed for a class of underactuated vehicles in order to stabilize reference trajectories either in thrust direction, velocity, or position. The basic modeling assumption is that the vehicle is pro-pulsed via a thrust force along a single body-fixed direction and that it has full torque actuation for attitude control (i.e., a typical actuation structure for aircrafts, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles, submarines, etc.). Additional assumptions on the external forces applied to the vehicle are also introduced for the sake of control design and stability analyses. They are best satisfied for vehicles which are subjected to an external force field (e.g., gravity) and whose shape induces lift forces with limited amplitude, unlike airplanes but as in the case of many VTOL drones. The interactions of the vehicle with the surrounding fluid are often difficult to model precisely whereas they may significantly influence and perturb its motion. By using a standard Lyapunov-based approach, novel nonlinear feedback control laws are proposed to compensate for modeling errors and perform robustly against such perturbations. Simulation results illustrating these properties on a realistic model of a VTOL drone subjected to wind gusts are reported.     

Integral Backstepping Control of an Unconventional Dual-Fan Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

In this paper, a dynamic model of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aerial vehicles, having lateral and longitudinal rotor tilting mechanism, is first developed using a Newton–Euler formulation. Then an integral backstepping (IB) control technique is proposed to improve the pitch, yaw, and roll stability of the vehicle. Such control mechanisms enables the UAV to perform complex tasks that no other Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can execute such as hover pitched. This control tactic allows the vehicle under investigation, eVader, to use the full potential of its flying characteristics enabled by the novel dual-axis oblique active tilting (OAT) mechanism, which enables it to maneuver inside obstructed environments. The potential of the eVader as a small UAV and its model are verified and then used to for autonomous take-off and landing as well as stabilizing the vehicle’s attitude. Finally, diverse simulation scenarios on attitude and position control, stabilization and autonomous take off and landing are presented.     

基于模糊控制的高空飞艇姿态控制系统设计

针对高空飞艇纵向姿态控制的操纵特点,提出了采用空气舵和前后副气囊充放气复合控制的方案,并基于模糊控制设计了其纵向姿态控制系统.首先完成了复合控制的高空飞艇纵向通道数学模型建模,给出了高空飞艇纵向通道小扰动线性数学模型;然后,采用模糊控制方法对高空飞艇的纵向姿态控制系统进行了设计;最后通过仿真验证了所设计控制系统的有效性...     

Modeling and Trajectory Tracking Control for Flapping-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

This paper studies the trajectory tracking problem of flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles(FWMAVs)in the longitudinal plane.First of all,the kinematics and dynamics of the FWMAV are established,wherein the aerodynamic force and torque generated by flapping wings and the tail wing are explicitly formulated with respect to the flapping frequency of the wings and the degree of tail wing inclination.To achieve autonomous tracking,an adaptive control scheme is proposed under the hierarchical framework.Specifically,a bounded position controller with hyperbolic tangent functions is designed to produce the desired aerodynamic force,and a pitch command is extracted from the designed position controller.Next,an adaptive attitude controller is designed to track the extracted pitch command,where a radial basis function neural network is introduced to approximate the unknown aerodynamic perturbation torque.Finally,the flapping frequency of the wings and the degree of tail wing inclination are calculated from the designed position and attitude controllers,respectively.In terms of Lyapunov's direct method,it is shown that the tracking errors are bounded and ultimately converge to a small neighborhood around the origin.Simulations are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.     

Towards a swarm of agile micro quadrotors

We describe a prototype 75 g micro quadrotor with onboard attitude estimation and control that operates autonomously with an external localization system. The motivation for designing quadrotors at this scale comes from two observations. First, the agility of the robot increases with a reduction in size, a fact that is supported by experimental results in this paper. Second, smaller robots are able to operate in tight formations in constrained, indoor environments. We describe the hardware and software used to operate the vehicle as well our dynamic model. We also discuss the aerodynamics of vertical flight and the contribution of ground effect to the vehicle performance. Finally, we discuss architecture and algorithms to coordinate a team of these quadrotors, and provide experimental results for a team of 20 micro quadrotors.     

Integrated multiple-model adaptive fault identification and reconfigurable fault-tolerant control for Lead-Wing close formation systems

This paper investigates the attitude and position tracking control problem for Lead-Wing close formation systems in the presence of loss of effectiveness and lock-in-place or hardover failure. In close formation flight, Wing unmanned aerial vehicle movements are influenced by vortex effects of the neighbouring Lead unmanned aerial vehicle. This situation allows modelling of aerodynamic coupling vortex-effects and linearisation based on optimal close formation geometry. Linearised Lead-Wing close formation model is transformed into nominal robust H-infinity models with respect to Mach hold, Heading hold, and Altitude hold autopilots; static feedback H-infinity controller is designed to guarantee effective tracking of attitude and position while manoeuvring Lead unmanned aerial vehicle. Based on H-infinity control design, an integrated multiple-model adaptive fault identification and reconfigurable fault-tolerant control scheme is developed to guarantee asymptotic stability of close-loop systems, error signal boundedness, and attitude and position tracking properties. Simulation results for Lead-Wing close formation systems validate the efficiency of the proposed integrated multiple-model adaptive control algorithm.     

微型仿昆扑翼飞行器解耦操控机制

提出一种解耦操控机制,用于解决微型仿昆扑翼飞行器飞行控制中的欠驱动问题．首先通过理论分析和仿真试验分析了翅膀的振翅运动参数对气动力旋量的控制作用;然后在对昆虫飞行所采用的生物学振翅运动进行模拟的基础上,通过调整翅膀的振翅运动参数,设计了一个能对气动力和气动力矩实现独立控制的解耦操控机制．此操控机制采用周期函数将控制输入量参数化,从而在仿昆扑翼布局的动力学模型中引入更多数目的独立控制量．通过将原动力学系统转化为完全能控系统,解决了仿昆扑翼布局的欠驱动控制问题．同时,此操控机制仅仅要求转动角可控,有效地降低了仿昆扑翼飞行器的设计难度．     

Integrated Guidance and Feedback Control of Underactuated Robotics System in SE(3)

An integrated guidance and feedback control scheme for steering an underactuated vehicle through desired waypoints in three-dimensional space, is developed here. The underactuated vehicle is modeled as a rigid body with four control inputs. These control inputs actuate the three degrees of freedom of rotational motion and one degree of freedom of translational motion in a vehicle body-fixed coordinate frame. This actuation model is appropriate for a wide range of underactuated vehicles including spacecraft with internal attitude actuators, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, fixed-wing multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), maneuverable robotic vehicles, etc. The guidance problem is developed on the special Euclidean group of rigid body motions, SE(3), in the framework ofgeometric mechanics, which represents the vehicle dynamics globally on this configuration manifold. The integrated guidance and control algorithm selects the desired trajectory for the translational motion that passes through the given waypoints, and the desired trajectory for the attitude based on the desired thrust direction to achieve the translational motion trajectory. A feedback control law is then obtained to steer the underactuated vehicle towards the desired trajectories in translation and rotation. This integrated guidance and control scheme takes into account known bounds on control inputs and generates a trajectory that is continuous and at least twice differentiable, which can be implemented with continuous and bounded control inputs. The integrated guidance and feedback control scheme is applied to an underactuated quadcopter UAV to autonomously generate a trajectory through a series of given waypoints in SE(3) and track the desired trajectory in finite time. The overall stability analysis of the feedback system is addressed. Discrete time models for the dynamics and control schemes of the UAV are obtained in the form of Lie group variational integrators using the discrete Lagrange-d’Alembert principle. Almost global asymptotic stability of the feedback system over its state space is shown analytically and verified through numerical simulations.     

DESIGN OF A FLIGHT CONTROLLER FOR HYPERSONIC FLIGHT EXPERIMENT VEHICLE

National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) and National Space Development Agency (NASDA) of Japan launched a hypersonic flight experiment vehicle (HYFLEX) for flight experiment of reentry phase to the top of the atmosphere in 1996. Flight condition in the experiment varied from an altitude of 107km and a speed of Mach 15 to an altitude of 30km and a speed of Mach 2. This paper describes design of a flight control system of the HYFLEX and evaluation of robustness against variations of command inputs and aerodynamic coefficients. A nonlinear simulation model that describes the vehicle motion has been made using the data obtained from wind tunnel experiments by NAL and NASDA. Linear models are computed from the nonlinear model for every second of the flight, assuming that the flight is a quasi‐trimmed one. Because the vehicle has a cylinder‐like configuration and takes a large angle of attack and a bank angle, coupling between longitudinal and lateral‐directional motions cannot be neglected; hence, the linear models include coupling terms. Averaging the linear models yields a nominal model for controller design, where the type‐1 linear quadratic (LQ) servo controller is employed for attitude control. Since the flight condition varies so much, it is difficult to control the vehicle using a single set of control gains. Therefore the flight period is segmented into eight intervals, for each of which a nominal linear model is computed, and then eight sets of feedback gain matrices are computed and scheduled as a function of flight time. The effectiveness and robustness of the flight control system are examined through computer simulation. Simulation results indicate that the control system works well even when attitude commands and aerodynamic parameters considerably deviate from nominal ones.