A New Closed-loop Control Allocation Method with Application to Direct Force Control

Abstract

A new closed-loop control allocation method is proposed to distribute the force and moment increment commands among multiple actuators at the same time. An innovative feedback configuration for the force and moment increment produced by the actuators deflections is added into the trajectory and attitude control loop, respectively. In addition, the trajectory and attitude controllers designed by nonlinear dynamic inversion are used to derive the desired force and moment increment commands. Then, the stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed theoretically when the actuators are healthy and fail, where there is no a fault detection method to identify the failure. Finally, the proposed method is used to achieve direct force control for decoupling the attitude and flight trajectory in the longitudinal flight. The nonlinear simulation using Canard Rotor/Wing (CRW) aircraft longitudinal model in fixed-wing mode demonstrates that this method can achieve two direct force control modes: pitch pointing and direct lift, whether the actuators are healthy or fail.