Autonomous Control of Parafoils Using Upper Surface Spoilers

The limited control authority and sensing capability of current airdrop systems make it extremely difficult for an autonomous system to recover from unanticipated changes in the wind profile near the ground. The addition of glide slope control to conventional lateral control of guided airdrop systems has shown the ability to provide dramatic improvements in landing accuracy. Additionally, upper surface aerodynamic spoilers using canopy bleed air have been shown to be an extremely effective means of both lateral and longitudinal control of parafoil and payload aircraft. The current work investigates the effect on landing accuracy of an autonomous parafoil and payload aircraft using upper surface spoilers for lateral and longitudinal control combined with a specialized control law to leverage the added authority this control mechanism provides. When used for lateral control alone, upper surface spoilers provide sufficient lateral control authority to achieve the same landing performance as typical airdrop systems utilizing the typical trailing edge brake control. Simulation results demonstrate that when using the spoilers for simultaneous lateral and longitudinal control, nearly a factor of 4 improvement is obtained in landing accuracy compared to conventional control strategies.

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