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.

[1]  S. Sastry,et al.  Output tracking control design of a helicopter model based on approximate linearization , 1998, Proceedings of the 37th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (Cat. No.98CH36171).

[2]  Reza Olfati-Saber.  Global configuration stabilization for the VTOL aircraft with strong input coupling , 2002, IEEE Trans. Autom. Control..

[3]  Reza Olfati-Saber,et al.  Nonlinear control of underactuated mechanical systems with application to robotics and aerospace vehicles , 2001 .

[4]  Mark B. Tischler,et al.  The Micro Craft iSTAR Micro Air Vehicle: Control System Design and Testing , 2001 .

[5]  R. Mahony,et al.  Robust trajectory tracking for a scale model autonomous helicopter , 2004 .

[6]  J. E. White,et al.  Stability augmentation for a free flying ducted fan , 1987 .

[7]  M. V. Cook,et al.  Dynamics of Flight , 1997 .

[8]  E. Feron,et al.  Real-time motion planning for agile autonomous vehicles , 2000, Proceedings of the 2001 American Control Conference. (Cat. No.01CH37148).

[9]  R. Olfati-Saber.  Near-identity diffeomorphisms and exponential /spl epsi/-tracking and /spl epsi/-stabilization of first-order nonholonomic SE(2) vehicles , 2002, Proceedings of the 2002 American Control Conference (IEEE Cat. No.CH37301).

[10]  Robert E. Mahony,et al.  Adaptive Compensation of Aerodynamic Effects during Takeoff and Landing Manoeuvres for a Scale Model Autonomous Helicopter , 2001, Eur. J. Control.

[11]  Rogelio Lozano,et al.  DYNAMIC MODELLING AND CONFIGURATION STABILIZATION FOR AN X4-FLYER. , 2002 .

[12]  Paul Gelhausen,et al.  A POWERED LIFT AERODYNAMIC ANALYSIS FOR THE DESIGN OF DUCTED FAN UAVS , 2003 .

[13]  Richard M. Murray,et al.  A Mathematical Introduction to Robotic Manipulation , 1994 .

[14]  Wing Ng,et al.  Improving Control System Effectiveness for Ducted Fan VTOL UAVs Operating in Crosswinds , 2003 .

[15]  Takeo Kanade,et al.  Vision-Based Autonomous Helicopter Research at Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute 1991-1997 , 1998 .

[16]  Rogelio Lozano,et al.  Forwarding control of scale model autonomous helicopter: a Lyapunov control design , 2003, 42nd IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37475).

[17]  S. Shankar Sastry,et al.  Nonlinear control design for slightly non-minimum phase systems: Application to V/STOL aircraft , 1992, Autom..

[18]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  Vision-based autonomous landing of an unmanned aerial vehicle , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[19]  A. Isidori.  Nonlinear Control Systems , 1985 .

[20]  Lorenzo Marconi,et al.  Autonomous vertical landing on an oscillating platform: an internal-model based approach , 2002, Autom..

[21]  Eric N. Johnson,et al.  Adaptive Trajectory Control for Autonomous Helicopters , 2005 .