Modelling and attitude control of a miniature ducted fan UAV

Abstract

Ducted fan UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) has broad application prospective. To study flight dynamics and flight control problems of ducted fan UAV, this paper developed a refined aerodynamic model for the ducted fan UAV by wind tunnel test. Based on that, the flight dynamic model of ducted fan UAV was built, which showed features as being nonlinear and unstable and of strong coupling and, therefore, inspired this paper to adopt a strong adaptive control approach based on decoupling to perform attitude control on the ducted fan vehicle. The approach combined model tracking control and reference model adaptive control together, which highly reduced attitude tracking error and improved stability margin of the closed-loop system, and was successfully applied in flight control simulation and flight tests of the vehicle.