Roll Attitude Control Research Articles

Development of an Automatic Solar Tracker Control System for a Tandem-Winged UAV and Its Implementation Strategies

Solar power is a popular option for powering Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) due to its ability to provide power for long-endurance flight. However, solar-powered UAVs face challenges, including operational reliability problems. To address their operational reliability issues, this paper proposes an automatic solar tracker system and tests two implementation strategies for controlling a tandem-winged and solar-powered UAV, developed by the Faculty of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Institut Teknologi Bandung. Due to its unconventional configuration, a mathematical model for the UAV is developed to evaluate the vehicle’s dynamic characteristics. Based on these, three feedback control systems are designed, i.e., roll attitude control, a heading tracker, and a solar tracker. Two implementation strategies are proposed to combine the control systems, i.e., the mode-switching and the simultaneous tracking strategies. A series of simulations are then conducted to check the vehicle’s overall flight performance, as well as the gathering of solar energy. The mode-switching strategy was able to gather up to 13% more solar energy than the simultaneous strategy, which could only reach slightly above 2%. Mode-switching, however, resulted in a shorter range compared to the latter, due to the time spent in the charging mode, flying in a circular pattern.

Multi-criteria Genetic Algorithm Optimization Approach for Balancing Bicopter Control

Efforts to find the best controller for stabilizing a flying vehicle have been widely developed in recent years. This work aims to join the development track by exploring the use of genetic algorithm (GA) to find the most optimum controller parameter considering settling time and overshoot criteria. Roll attitude control of a balancing bicopter was chosen as the applied plant to confirm the designed method. The controller structure applied in this research is an ideal proportional-integral (PI) controller. Two equations considering the highlighted criteria for the objective function of the GA were developed with one of them involving integral absolute error (IAE) (MCIAE-GA), and the other one does not (MC-GA). Two GAs with both equations were compared to ziegler-nichols and the one with a standalone IAE (IAE-GA). The test results confirm that the proposed MC-GA and MCIAE-GA outperform the comparative controllers at their best performance by keeping the settling time as small as possible without overshooting. Despite the latter showing a slightly faster settling time, the former has better repeatability given a smaller standard deviation for Kp and Ki parameters with a mere 0.0820 and 0.0980, respectively.

Virtual flight test of pitch and roll attitude control based on circulation control of tailless flying wing aircraft without rudders

Circulation Control (CC) realizes rudderless flight control by driving compressed air jet to generate a virtual rudder surface, which significantly improves low detectability. The layout plan of combined control rudder surface is proposed based on the tailless flying wing aircraft. The closed-loop jet actuator system and stepless rudder surface switching control strategy are used to quantitatively study the control characteristics of circulation actuator for pitch and roll attitude through 3-DOF virtual flight test in a wind tunnel with a powered model at wind speed of 40 m/s. The results show that the combined use of circulation actuators can achieve bidirectional continuous and stable control of the aircraft’s pitch and roll attitude, with the maximum pitch rate of 12.3 (°)/s and the maximum roll rate of 21.5 (°)/s; the response time of attitude angular rate varying with the jet pressure ratio is less than 0.02 s, which can satisfy the control response requirements of aircraft motion stability for the control system; the jet rudder surface has a strong moment control ability, and the pitch moment of the jet elevator with a pressure ratio of 1.28 is the same as that of the mechanical elevator with 28° rudder deflection, which can expand the flight control boundary.

Disturbance rejection enhancement using predictive control for the fixed‐wing UAV with multiple ailerons

SummaryThe performance of small fixed‐wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is easily degraded by exogenous disturbances. In an attempt to improve the performance, the structural change is made in conventional small fixed‐wing UAV through segmentation of each aileron control surface into multiples. Detailed system identification experiments are performed on each aileron pair in the wind tunnel to acquire linear dynamic models for the roll attitude of the UAV. These experiments have provided the transfer functions for the aileron control surfaces based on corresponding frequency response. Three distinctive model predictive controllers are designed and deployed in real‐time hardware to achieve the roll attitude control. The roll attitude control experiments are validated in wind tunnel under both normal and turbulent environments. The results show that multiple input and single output control system provides significant improvement in the roll attitude and disturbance rejection performance. The collective actuation of multiple control surfaces improves roll stability by to when compared to the single aileron pair based conventional control in the presence of turbulent flight conditions.

Research on Roll Attitude Control of UAV Based on Active Disturbance Rejection Control

The roll attitude control of small high-speed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is very difficult compared to the conventional low-speed UAV. The dynamic pressure is large and the moment of inertia is too small, which cause the aileron is sensitive to manipulation. The roll attitude may oscillate due to the actuator rate limiting. In response to this feature, the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) is added to compensate the nonlinear part of the system, so that the system is close to an integral link. The problem of the actuator rate limiting can be solved by tuning the gain of the angular rate control to change the system bandwidth. On the other hand, the rolling motion is, in general, coupled from the yawing and sideslip motions. ADRC can decouple the roll channel and the yaw channel, solving the nonlinear problem of control. Combination with the requirements of frequency and time domain, design the roll attitude controller. The UAV nonlinear simulation results show that the roll attitude control based on ADRC meets the flight control requirements.

A novel hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm for optimization problems

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a novel hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm called HMGSG to solve the optimization problems. In the proposed HMGSG algorithm, a spiral-shaped path for grey wolf optimization (GWO) is used to ensure both the faster convergence rate and diversity. The mutualism phase of symbiotic organisms search (SOS) is introduced and modified with the adaptive benefit factors to optimize the ability of exploitation. The stud genetic algorithm (GA) is introduced into the HMGSG to promote convergence. The numerical experiment results show that the performance of HMGSG is superior to that of the GWO, SOS and GA. In addition, the HMGSG algorithm is used to optimize the fractional-order PID controller parameters for roll attitude control of UAV. And the simulation results show the effectiveness of this algorithm.

Roll aerodynamic characteristics study of an unmanned aerial vehicle based on circulation control technology

To explore the control efficiency of circulation flow control technology, a circulation control actuator with an independent gas source has been designed and applied in roll attitude control of a small unmanned aerial vehicle. The circulation control devices are arranged at the two ends of the wing on an unmanned aerial vehicle scale model, the changes in aerodynamic force and aerodynamic moment caused by turning on the actuator are measured in a wind tunnel, and the flow field characteristics are analysed using particle image velocimetry technology. The flight control effect of the roll attitude is verified via a flight test. Experimental and flight test results show that the control of roll attitude can be achieved by turning on the circulation control actuator on one side, and the maximum efficiency that the circulation control generates is equivalent to 8° aileron deflection with production of a favorable yaw moment to achieve a coordinated turn. The circulation control actuator can increase lift and reduce drag when opened on both sides simultaneously. The maximum lift-to-drag ratio of the UAV increased from 5 to 9, and this approach can also suppress flow separation and delay stall at high angles of attack. The aileron or trailing edge flaps can be replaced with circulation control actuators, and the circulation control technology can also be applied to aerodynamic performance improvement and flight control in other types of aircraft.

Roll Attitude Controller Design for Ships at Zero Speed

A longitudinal flapping zero-speed fin stabilizer system is applied to reduce the roll motion of ships at zero speed. The righting moment model of the longitudinal flapping fin stabilizer is improved by considering the eddy resistance. According to the hydrodynamic characteristics of the model, the angular velocity of the fin stabilizer is chosen as a manipulated variable to control the ship roll motion at zero speed. A master–slave control method is used to solve problems of the multi-constrained strong nonlinear relationship with fin angle, angular speed, and angular acceleration and dynamic memory function in input nonlinearity. The fuzzy sliding mode controller is conducted as the master controller to deal with parameter uncertainties and unpredictable disturbance upper bound. The output tracking feedback slave controller is used to realize the nonlinear backstepping from the roll moment to the angular velocity of the fin stabilizer, and the actual control variable is obtained. A ship with the longitudinal flapping foils is considered and the effectiveness of the proposed strategy is verified by simulations.

Guidance and control algorithms for mini UAV autopilots

PurposeThe aim of this paper is the implementation and validation of control and guidance algorithms for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) autopilots.Design/methodology/approachThe path-following control of the UAV can be separated into different layers: inner loop for pitch and roll attitude control, outer loop on heading, altitude and airspeed control for the waypoints tracking and waypoint navigation. Two control laws are defined: one based on proportional integrative derivative (PID) controllers both for inner and outer loops and one based on the combination of PIDs and an adaptive controller.FindingsGood results can be obtained in terms of trajectory tracking (based on waypoints) and of parameter variations. The adaptive control law guarantees smoothing responses and less oscillations and glitches on the control deflections.Practical implicationsThe proposed controllers are easily implementable on-board and are computationally efficient.Originality/valueThe algorithm validation via hardware in the loop simulations can be used to reduce the platform set-up time and the risk of losing the prototype during the flight tests.

A fully tuned RACS for flight control system

This paper presents the design of a roll attitude control system (RACS) based on bacterial foraging particle swarm optimised (BFPSO) proportional integral and derivative (PID) autopilot that controls the roll angle of an aircraft. To achieve the high degree of spiral stability desired in aircraft flight control system (AFCS) requires the use of RACS. The RACS uses feedback mechanism to maintain the roll attitude in presence of disturbances and responds rapidly to the commands from the pilot. Here a new algorithm is proposed which combines the advantages of both PSO and BFO to form a new algorithm called BFPSO. The parameters such as Kp, Ki and Kd of PID-based RACS controller are tuned by BFPSO algorithm to achieve the dynamic stability as required by the pilot while spinning an aircraft. Finally, it is found from simulation, proposed controller gives the best performance compared to PSOPID, BFOPID and RBFNC controller.

A fully tuned RACS for flight control system

This paper presents the design of a roll attitude control system (RACS) based on bacterial foraging particle swarm optimised (BFPSO) proportional integral and derivative (PID) autopilot that controls the roll angle of an aircraft. To achieve the high degree of spiral stability desired in aircraft flight control system (AFCS) requires the use of RACS. The RACS uses feedback mechanism to maintain the roll attitude in presence of disturbances and responds rapidly to the commands from the pilot. Here a new algorithm is proposed which combines the advantages of both PSO and BFO to form a new algorithm called BFPSO. The parameters such as Kp, Ki and Kd of PID-based RACS controller are tuned by BFPSO algorithm to achieve the dynamic stability as required by the pilot while spinning an aircraft. Finally, it is found from simulation, proposed controller gives the best performance compared to PSOPID, BFOPID and RBFNC controller.

Efikasnost primene aerodinamičkih interceptora za kontrolu ugla valjanja rakete

Efikasnost primene aerodinamičkih interceptora za kontrolu ugla valjanja rakete

基于倾转翼飞机垂直起降阶段PID姿态控制器设计

倾转翼飞机克服了倾转旋翼飞机垂直起降状态因固定机翼阻挡旋翼下洗气流而造成的效率降低的问题，但仍存在姿态控制难问题。然后针对倾转翼飞机垂直起降阶段的姿态控制提出相应的控制方案，并对俯仰和横滚姿态控制建立了数学模型和采用PID控制方法设计了相应的姿态控制器，最后使用Matlab软件平台的Simulink模块对该PID控制方法的可行性和有效性进行仿真验证。结果表明，俯仰和横滚姿态控制器均能满足要求。 The tilt wing aircraft overcomes the problem that the efficiency of the wing rotor IS reduced due to the lower air flow caused by the fixed wing blocking rotor, but there are still problems of attitude control. Then the corresponding control scheme is put forward for the attitude of the tilt wing aircraft in VTOL mode, and focuses on the pitch and roll attitude control mathematical model are established and the attitude controller is designed by using PID control method. Finally, the simulink module of Matlab software platform is used to simulate the feasibility and validity of the PID control method.

Model Based Automatic Regulation Process for Guidance and Control of Quadrotor UAV

In this literature, model based automatic regulation process is proposed for guidance control of a Quadrotor UAV. The performance of the system will be first tuned to match the performance of the reference model. It gives more convenient way for cope with different load for different mission. The automatic regulation process is used to adjust parameters of the basic control system that is well designed. The basic control system includes: (a) height control system using velocity stabilizing in the inner loop; (b) roll, pitch and yaw attitude control systems using angular rate stabilizing in inner loops. Base upon the basic control system, X_B and Y_B body axes velocities control laws and locus tracking laws can be added also. This application is different from conventional velocity, and position control techniques of conventional fix-fin UAV's. The proposed method is verified by vast digital simulations.

Ducted Fan Flying Object with Normal and Reverse Ducted Fan Units

Recently, UAV such as single / multi rotor helicopter is used in fields of aerial photography and aerial investigation. But rotor blades of UAV thrust device are not covered, and the thrust is generated by high rotational speed. Thus UAV has a high risk of damage. In previous study, we presented inverted pendulum type flying object (DFO1 and DFO2) using ducted fans instead of rotor blades. P I- D control was employed for roll, pitch and yaw attitude control. We succeeded to achieve stable hovering by 3-axes (roll, pitch and yaw axis) attitude control. However, small oscillation and small steady state error appears. These oscillation and steady state error can be attributed to Gyro moment of ducted fan tilting motion. In this study, we report a newly developed DFO3 equipped with normal and reverse rotation ducted fan to cancel Gyro moment effect. We succeeded to achieve stable take off / landing and hovering.

SDRE Based Integrated Roll, Yaw and Pitch Controller Design for 122mm Artillery Rocket

State-dependent Riccati equation (SDRE) based controller design is an emerging trend in real world applications. This paper describes the design of an integrated roll, yaw and pitch attitude controller for a fin stabilized and canard controlled 122mm artillery rocket using SDRE technique. The rocket configuration considered is with front canards and foldable straight tail fins, and is given initial spin at the time of launch. Tails fins are deployed immediately after launch and offer high roll damping moment thereby reducing the spin rate to zero within six seconds of flight. The canards are then deployed and the roll orientation of rocket is regulated to zero with the canard deflection commands generated by the SDRE based roll autopilot. Once the roll orientation of rocket is brought to zero, the full state integrated roll, yaw and pitch autopilot comes into action. Elements of the state weighing matrix for Riccati equation have been chosen to be state dependent to exploit the design flexibility offered by the Riccati equation technique. Simulation results show significant reduction in impact point dispersion with the attitude controlled trajectory as compared to uncontrolled trajectory. Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to prove the efficacy of the proposed controller design even in the presence of wide range of deviations in rocket parameters.

Control of Ducted Fan Flying Object Using Thrust Vectoring

Recently, R/C helicopter is used in fields of aerial photography and aerial investigation. But helicopter rotor blades are not covered, and the thrust is generated by high rotational speed. Thus R/C helicopter has a high risk of damage. In this study, we developed a new flying object using ducted fans instead of rotor blades. At first, PD control was employed for pitch and roll attitude control, but it caused steady-state error. Moreover PI-D control was used instead of PD control, and it reduced the steady-state error. We succeeded to achieve stable hovering by three-axes (roll, pitch, and yaw axes) attitude control.

PID Controller Parameter Tuning Based on Iterative Learning Control

On the basis of sufficient analysis to the characteristic of iterative learning control and PID controller parameter tuning, an idea of applying iterative learning control to PID controller parameter tuning was aroused in this paper, we choose the linear model around the character point of Roll Attitude controller as the research plant, transforming the problem of PID controller parameter tuning into the problem of open-close loop iterative learning control problem. The stability of PID controller parameter iterative learning control system and the astringency of controller parameters were verified for the first time through the construct of a compress mapping arithmetic operator, and a novel stop condition design scheme of integral type is advanced at the same time, the iterative learning of PID controller parameter was then successfully solved. The ultimate simulation study validates the correctness and the effectiveness of the theory.

Evaluating H∞ controllers on the NRC Bell 205 fly-by-wire helicopter

This paper describes the development and validation of a nine-degree-of-freedom (DOF) helicopter model, and the use of this model in designing H ∞ optimal controllers for testing on an experimental fly-by-wire helicopter. The model includes rotor flapping dynamics and an inflow correction factor. Its use has led to improvements (with respect to earlier designs based on a different model) in the robustness properties of the resulting controller. For example, the need for predictor-type filters in the feedback path has been eliminated. Flight-test results are presented. Discrepancies still remain between predicted and achieved performance, but overall handling quality ratings have improved with respect to a previous H ∞ design, and clear improvements have been obtained in pitch and roll attitude control: e.g. an increase in roll axis bandwidth from 1.9 to 2.5 rad/s.

Introduction to Quantitative Feedback Theory for lateral robust flight control systems design

Quantitative Feedback Theory (QFT), is a frequency-domain-based robust control design approach that was developed in the early 1970s and has received considerable attention over the past two decades. In the last few years, its application to aircraft flight control systems design has been widely investigated. In this paper the basic concepts, principles, design procedure, and features of QFT are reviewed and summarized for single-input single-output systems. Its application to a lateral flight control system design is then considered. A robust roll-attitude control system is designed to cover a certain operating range using the QFT methodology, and certain eigenstructure-assignment results. The integration of QFT with eigenstructure methods results in a controller with the stability and performance robustness of QFT design, and the decoupled dynamic responses of an eigenstructure-assignment approach. The results indicate QFT has significant potential in robust flight control systems design. The combination of techniques should be applicable to other industrial sectors.