Abstract
This paper presents a model predictive controller (MPC) for position control of a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in hover flight. A ‘cross’ configuration quad-rotor tail-sitter UAV is designed with the capabilities for both hover and high efficiency level flight. The six-degree-of-freedom (DOF) nonlinear dynamic model of the UAV is built based on aerodynamic data obtained from wind tunnel experiments. The model predictive position controller is then developed with the augmented linearized state-space model. Measured and unmeasured disturbance model are introduced into the modeling and optimization process to improve disturbance rejection ability. The MPC controller is first verified and tuned in the hardware-in-loop (HIL) simulation environment and then implemented in an on-board flight computer for real-time indoor experiments. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed MPC position controller has good trajectory tracking performance and robust position holding capability under the conditions of prevailing and gusty winds.
Highlights
Small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems have gradually evolved from a commercial aerial photographic platform into industrial tools
The main contribution of this work is the development of the model predictive controller (MPC) position controller for a tail-sitter UAV in hover flight for trajectory tracking and disturbance rejection
The position of the center of gravity (CG) of the vehicle in Γi is defined by ξ = [ X Y Z ]T ∈ R3, the velocity in Γi is described by v = [ Ẋ Ẏ Ż ]T ∈ R3, the orientation of the vehicle is denoted by RIB ∈ SO(3), which stands for 3D rotation group, and the angular velocity is denoted by ω
Summary
Small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems have gradually evolved from a commercial aerial photographic platform into industrial tools. They can conduct various kinds of missions, such as cargo delivery, highway inspection, and search and rescue This trend has led to increased requirements for small UAV systems’ performance, including flight range, endurance, and payload capacity. Traditional airframe configurations such as fixed-wing, multi-rotor and helicopter UAVs are widely adopted. Among different kinds of VTOL configurations, tail-sitter UAVs eliminate the complicated mechanism design and the consequent low reliability, and introduce extra difficulties in the control system development due to large flight envelop and vulnerability to cross wind. The main contribution of this work is the development of the MPC position controller for a tail-sitter UAV in hover flight for trajectory tracking and disturbance rejection.
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