Investigation of Wind Effects on UAV Adaptive PID Based MPC Control System

Abstract

In this paper, an assessment of the state of coastal territories of Ecuador monitoring issue is conducted. The use of an autonomous robotic aerial platform is proposed as a technical solution to enhance the efficiency of remote surveillance missions performed by national security services along coastline. Considering the UAV nonlinear flight dynamics, as well as the missing information of the environment, is designed a UAV hierarchical control structure composed of an adaptive PID based MPC control strategy. The implementation of an adaptive PID based MPC controller leads to significantly improve the UAV optimal trajectory tracking task, as well as satisfy properties such as adaptiveness, self-learning, and capability of handling uncertainties caused by the unpredictable behavior of sea currents and wind loads retaining robust performance features. In this work, the investigation of external disturbances on UAV stabilization and positioning accuracy considers swirling wind flows and short-term wind gusts. These correspond to deterministic and random processes, are mathematically represented as trigonometric functions with random amplitudes determined by the gust coefficients and the wind loading periods of the pulses. The established range is given by a set of several observations of wind loads in the coastal territories of Ecuador. The analyzed data is collected from the database of national meteorological stations. Finally, the simulation process of the perturbed controlled motion of the UAV along a segmented linear trajectory, as well as the data analysis and graphics are carried out in the MATLAB environment.