Estimation of Aerodynamic Angles in a Mini Aerial Vehicle under Turbulent Atmosphere

Abstract

A Low Aspect Ratio (LAR) wing Mini Aerial Vehicle (MAV) has been considered for this research work. LAR wings do not stall sharply and the lift is constant or keeps increasing up to large Angle of Attack (AOA). This can be utilized in flying the aircraft at lower speeds. Focus of the present work is to estimate the aerodynamic angles under turbulent atmospheric conditions, which can be further used for development of control laws. Using a flight simulation program, the true states of the aircraft motion are generated and a zero mean white noise is added to few of these states as required for the measurements. These noisy states are used as sensor measurements for estimating the AOA and Side Slip Angle (SSA). A Dryden model has been used in the simulation for Turbulent Atmospheric conditions. The estimation algorithm involves two Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithms in cascade. The first one being for attitude estimation and the second EKF is for aerodynamic angles estimation. Simulations are performed with and without a pseudo measurement of AOA and SSA in the EKF algorithm and the results are discussed.