TY - JOUR
T1 - Filtered dynamic inversion for altitude control of fixed-wing unmanned air vehicles
AU - Mullen, Jon
AU - Bailey, Sean C.C.
AU - Hoagg, Jesse B.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS.
PY - 2016/7/1
Y1 - 2016/7/1
N2 - Instrumented unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) represent a new way of conducting atmospheric science, particularly within the atmospheric boundary layer where the air is turbulent. However, using autonomous UAVs for airborne measurement requires active control methods capable of following altitude commands despite unknown and turbulent disturbances to the air. Filtered dynamic inversion (FDI) is a control method with desirable command-following and disturbance-rejection properties for this application. FDI requires limited model information and is thus robust to parametric uncertainty, which arises in modeling UAV dynamics. In this paper, FDI is implemented in an altitude-flight-control system for an autonomous fixed-wing UAV. The control system is validated in simulation with a nonlinear dynamic model of a small fixed-wing UAV. The control system is also implemented and validated in flight experiments with turbulent wind conditions. Experimental results show that FDI yields improved altitude and pitch command following as compared to a classical (e.g., proportional-integral) flight-control system. In particular, experimental data demonstrate that the average power of the altitude and pitch command-following errors with FDI is smaller than those with proportional-integral control.
AB - Instrumented unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) represent a new way of conducting atmospheric science, particularly within the atmospheric boundary layer where the air is turbulent. However, using autonomous UAVs for airborne measurement requires active control methods capable of following altitude commands despite unknown and turbulent disturbances to the air. Filtered dynamic inversion (FDI) is a control method with desirable command-following and disturbance-rejection properties for this application. FDI requires limited model information and is thus robust to parametric uncertainty, which arises in modeling UAV dynamics. In this paper, FDI is implemented in an altitude-flight-control system for an autonomous fixed-wing UAV. The control system is validated in simulation with a nonlinear dynamic model of a small fixed-wing UAV. The control system is also implemented and validated in flight experiments with turbulent wind conditions. Experimental results show that FDI yields improved altitude and pitch command following as compared to a classical (e.g., proportional-integral) flight-control system. In particular, experimental data demonstrate that the average power of the altitude and pitch command-following errors with FDI is smaller than those with proportional-integral control.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ast.2016.04.013
DO - 10.1016/j.ast.2016.04.013
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84966318721
SN - 1270-9638
VL - 54
SP - 241
EP - 252
JO - Aerospace Science and Technology
JF - Aerospace Science and Technology
ER -