Trajectory tracking control for hovering and acceleration maneuver of Quad Tilt Rotor UAV

The ability to transition between vertical and horizontal flight is of great importance to convertible unmanned aerial vehicles. A novel convertible UAV-a Quad Tilt Rotor UAV (QTR UAV) was designed, which could operate as a quad rotor as well as an airplane by means of transition maneuver. This paper focuses on the trajectory tracking control for the hovering mode and acceleration maneuver which is the basis for the transition maneuver. First, a prototype QTR UAV was constructed to prove the concept and validate the proposed layout, which demonstrated good stability and control characteristics under manual control. Then dynamic model for full flight profile was constructed according to the first principle. A control strategy was scheduled for the transition maneuver. A nonlinear controller was designed based on dynamic inversion method. The effectiveness of the proposed control methodology was shown through numerical simulations.

[1]  R. Mehra,et al.  Model predictive control design for XV-15 tilt rotor flight control , 2001 .

[2]  Fan Yong,et al.  Transition Flight Control of Two Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing Aircraft , 2008 .

[3]  Anthony J. Calise,et al.  Development of a Reconfigurable Flight Control Law for the X-36 Tailless Fighter Aircraft , 2000 .

[4]  A. Kulhare,et al.  Back-stepping control strategy for stabilization of a Tilt-rotor UAV , 2012, 2012 24th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC).

[5]  Peter W. Gibbens,et al.  Flight Testing of the T-Wing Tail-Sitter Unmanned Air Vehicle , 2008 .

[6]  Anthony J. Calise,et al.  Nonlinear adaptive flight control using neural networks , 1998 .

[7]  Seth B. Anderson,et al.  Historical Overview of V/STOL Aircraft Technology , 1997 .

[8]  Chenxi Zhang,et al.  Mode-transition control law design for aircraft with ability of VTOL and high-speed cruise flight , 2010, Proceedings of the 29th Chinese Control Conference.

[9]  A. J. Calise,et al.  Adaptive nonlinear control for tiltrotor aircraft , 1998, Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Conference on Control Applications (Cat. No.98CH36104).

[10]  Mahmut Faruk Aksit,et al.  Design and construction of a novel quad tilt-wing UAV , 2012 .

[11]  Seongwook Choi,et al.  Development and Conversion Flight Test of a Small Tiltrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle , 2010 .

[12]  Song Yanguo,et al.  Design of Flight Control System for a Small Unmanned Tilt Rotor Aircraft , 2009 .

[13]  D. Shim,et al.  Controller Synthesis and Application to Hover-to-Cruise Transition Flight of a Tail Sitter UAV , 2010 .

[14]  R. Lozano,et al.  Transition flight control of the quad-tilting rotor convertible MAV , 2013, 2013 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS).