Agile flight control techniques for a fixed-wing aircraft
Name
496316922-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
29.77 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
59ed2a089f4050ccf3f2e7037c194ede
Author(s)
Sobolic, Frantisek Michal
Advisor(s)
Jonathan P. How.
Date Issued
2009
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) become more involved in challenging mission objectives, the need for agility controlled flight becomes more of a necessity. The ability to navigate through constrained environments as well as quickly maneuver to each mission target is essential. Currently, individual vehicles are developed with a particular mission objective, whether it be persistent surveillance or fly-by reconnaissance. Fixed-wing vehicles with a high thrust-to-weight ratio are capable of performing maneuvers such as take-off or perch style landing and switch between hover and conventional flight modes. Agile flight controllers enable a single vehicle to achieve multiple mission objectives. By utilizing the knowledge of the flight dynamics through all flight regimes, nonlinear controllers can be developed that control the aircraft in a single design. This thesis develops a full six-degree-of-freedom model for a fixed-wing propeller-driven aircraft along with methods of control through non conventional flight regimes. In particular, these controllers focus on transitioning into and out of hover to level flight modes. This maneuver poses hardships for conventional linear control architectures because these flights involve regions of the post-stall regime, which is highly nonlinear due to separation of flow over the lifting surfaces. Using Lyapunov back stepping control stability theory as well as quaternion-based control methods, control strategies are developed that stabilize the aircraft through these flight regimes without the need to switch control schemes. The effectiveness of each control strategy is demonstrated in both simulation and flight experiments.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2009.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-94).
Subjects
Aeronautics and Astronautics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
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copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
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