Attitude Stabilization with Real-time Experiments of a Tail-sitter Aircraft in Horizontal Flight

This paper focusses on the attitude stabilization of a mini tail-sitter aircraft, considering aerodynamic effects. The main characteristic of this vehicle is that it operates in either the hover mode for launch and recovery, or the horizontal mode during cruise. The dynamic model is obtained using the Euler–Lagrange formulation, and aerodynamic effects are obtained by studying the propeller effects. A nonlinear saturated Proportional-Integral-Derivative (SPID) control with compensation of aerodynamic moments is proposed in order to achieve the asymptotic stabilization of the vehicle in horizontal mode. In addition, a homemade inertial measurement unit (HIMU) is built for operating the complete operational range of the vehicle (including vertical and horizontal modes). Finally, simulation results are presented for validating the control law, and practical results are obtained in real-time during the flight.

[1]  Donald McLean,et al.  Automatic Flight Control Systems , 1990 .

[2]  Emilio Frazzoli,et al.  Aircraft Autopilot Analysis and Envelope Protection for Operation Under Icing Conditions , 2004 .

[3]  T. Teichmann,et al.  Dynamics of Flight: Stability and Control , 1959 .

[4]  Rogelio Lozano,et al.  Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines , 2005 .

[5]  Samir Bennani,et al.  Robust Flight Control , 1997 .

[6]  Kelly Cohen,et al.  Fuzzy Logic Non-Minimum Phase Autopilot Design , 2003 .

[7]  Dan Koditschek,et al.  Natural motion for robot arms , 1984, The 23rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

[8]  D. Allen-Booth,et al.  Classical Mechanics 2nd edn , 1974 .

[9]  Barnes W. McCormick,et al.  Aerodynamics of V/STOL flight , 1967 .

[10]  R. P. G. Collinson,et al.  Introduction to avionics , 1996 .

[11]  Frank L. Lewis,et al.  Aircraft Control and Simulation , 1992 .

[12]  J. W. Humberston.  Classical mechanics , 1980, Nature.

[13]  M. V. Cook.  Flight Dynamics Principles , 1997 .

[14]  D. Gangsaas,et al.  Control law synthesis for an airplane with relaxed static stability , 1986 .

[15]  Robert C. Nelson,et al.  Flight Stability and Automatic Control , 1989 .

[16]  Itzhak Barkana,et al.  Classical and Simple Adaptive Control for Nonminimum Phase Autopilot Design , 2005 .

[17]  Michael V. Cook,et al.  Flight Dynamics Principles: A Linear Systems Approach to Aircraft Stability and Control , 2007 .

[18]  Rogelio Lozano,et al.  Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Embedded Control , 2013 .

[19]  R. Kelly.  Global positioning of robot manipulators via PD control plus a class of nonlinear integral actions , 1998, IEEE Trans. Autom. Control..

[20]  Samir Bennani,et al.  Robust flight control : a design challenge , 1997 .

[21]  Warren F. Phillips,et al.  Mechanics of Flight , 2004 .

[22]  Katsuhiko Ogata,et al.  Modern Control Engineering , 1970 .

[23]  Barnes W. McCormick,et al.  Aerodynamics, Aeronautics and Flight Mechanics , 1979 .

[24]  M. Zimmermann,et al.  HIGH BANDWIDTH ORIENTATION MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL BASED ON COMPLEMENTARY FILTERING , 1991 .