Flight Control System of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

To date unmanned aerial system(UAS)technologies have attracted more and more attention from countries in the world.Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)play an important role in reconnaissance,surveillance,and target tracking within military and civil fields.Here one briefly introduces the development of UAVs,and reviews its various subsystems including autopilot,ground station,mission planning and management subsystem,navigation system and so on.Furthermore,an overview is provided for advanced design methods of UAVs control system,including the linear feedback control,adaptive and nonlinear control,and intelligent control techniques.Finally,the future of UAVs flight control techniques is forecasted.

A fault-tolerant control method for distributed flight control system facing wing damage

With the strong battlefield application environment of the next generation fighter,based on the design of distributed vehicle management system,a fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control(FTC)method for wing surface damage is proposed in this paper.Aiming at three kinds of wing damage modes,this paper proposes a diagnosis method based on the fault decision tree and forms a fault decision tree for wing damage from the aspects of sample database construction,feature parameter extraction,and fault decision tree construction.Based on the fault diagnosis results,the longitudinal control law based on dynamic inverse and the lateral-directional robust control laws based on linear quadratic regulator(LQR)are proposed.From the simulation examples,the fault diagnosis algorithm based on the decision tree can complete the judgment of three wing surface damage modes within 2 ms,and the FTC law can make the fighter quickly return to a stable flight state after a short transient of 1 s,which achieves the fault-tolerant goal.

ADAPTIVE FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM OF ARMED HELICOPTER USING WAVELET NEURAL NETWORK METHOD

A discussion is devoted to the design of an adaptive flight control system of the armed helicopter using wavelet neural network method. Firstly, the control loop of the attitude angle is designed with a dynamic inversion scheme in a quick loop and a slow loop. respectively. Then, in order to compensate the error caused by dynamic inversion, the adaptive flight control system of the armed helicopter using wavelet neural network method is put forward, so the BP wavelet neural network and the Lyapunov stable wavelet neural network are used to design the helicopter flight control system. Finally, the typical maneuver flight is simulated to demonstrate its validity and effectiveness. Result proves that the wavelet neural network has an engineering practical value and the effect of WNN is good.

Fault diagnosis and accommodation for linear parameter-varying in flight control systems

The fault diagnosis and accommodation strategy for a class of linear parameter-varying (LPV) systems were investigated. A fast adaptive fault estimation (FAFE) algorithm for LPV systems module, based on an adaptive observer, proposed to enhance the performance of fault estimation including rapidity and accuracy. Then, the obtained fault estimate was used to construct the fault tolerant control (FTC) law. The design method was formulated as a convex linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) optimization problem. Once the faults are estimated, the fault tolerant controller is implemented as a dynamic output feedback controller. This controller can compensate for the effect of the faults by stabilizing the closed-loop systems. Finally, a helicopter model in a vertical flight with actuator fault was used to the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Oscillatory Failure Detection for Flight Control System Using Voting and Comparing Monitors

Oscillatory failure cases(OFC)detection in the fly-by-wire(FBW)flight control system for civil aircraft is addressed in this paper.First,OFC is ranked four levels:Handling quality,static load,global structure fatigue and local fatigue,according to their respect impact on aircraft.Second,we present voting and comparing monitors based on un-similarity redundancy commands to detect OFC.Third,the associated performances,the thresholds and the counters of the monitors are calculated by the high fidelity nonlinear aircraft models.Finally,the monitors of OFC are verified by the Iron Bird Platform with real parameters of the flight control system.The results show that our approach can detect OFC rapidly.

DESIGNING REDUCED-ORDER CONTROLLERS OF MIXEDSENSITIVITY PROBLEM FOR FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEMS

Based on linear matrix inequalities (LMI), the design method of reduced order controllers of mixed sensitivity problem is studied for flight control systems. It is shown that there exists a controller with order not greater than the difference between the generalized plant order and the number of independent control variables, if the mixed sensitivity problem is solvable for strict regular flight control plants. The proof is constructive, and an approach to design such a controller can be obtained in terms of a pair of feasible solution to the well known 3 LMI. Finally, an example of mixed sensitivity problem for a flight control system is given to demonstrate practice of the approach.

Nonlinear adaptive flight control system:Performance enhancement and validation

The problem of decreasing stability margins in L1 adaptive control systems is discussed and an out-of-loop L1 adaptive control scheme based on Lyapunov’s stability theorem is proposed.This scheme enhances the effectiveness of the adaptation,which ensures that the system has suffi-cient stability margins to achieve the desired performance under parametric uncertainty,additional delays,and actuator faults.The stability of the developed control system is demonstrated through a series of simulations.Compared with an existing control scheme,the constant adjustment of the sta-bility margins by the proposed adaptive scheme allows their range to be extended by a factor of 4–5,bringing the stability margin close to that of variable gain PD control with adaptively scheduled gains.The engineered practicability of adaptive technology is verified.A series of flight tests verify the practicability of the designed adaptive technology.The results of these tests demonstrate the enhanced performance of the proposed control scheme with nonlinear parameter estimations under insufficient stability margins and validate its robustness in the event of actuator failures.

A quantum inspired genetic algorithm for multimodal optimization of wind disturbance alleviation flight control system

This paper develops a Quantum-inspired Genetic Algorithm(QGA) to find the sets of optimal parameters for the wind disturbance alleviation Flight Control System(FCS). To search the problem domain more evenly and uniformly, the lattice rule based stratification method is used to create new chromosomes. The chromosomes are coded and updated according to quantuminspired strategies. A niching method is used to ensure every chromosome can converge to its corresponding local minimum in the optimization process. A parallel archive system is adopted to monitor the chromosomes on-line and save all potential feasible solutions in the optimization process. An adaptive search strategy is used to gradually adjust the search domain of each niche to finally approach the local minima. The solutions found by the QGA are compared with some other Multimodal Optimization(MO) algorithms and are tested on the FCS of the Boeing 747 to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Networked guaranteed cost PID attitude tracking control of a laboratory flight system

This paper investigates the networked flight control system for a laboratory 3 degrees of freedom (3-DOF) helicopter,and presents a novel networked guaranteed cost proportion-integration-differentiation (PID) attitude tracking control method with consideration of time-varying delay and packet dropouts.As the 3-DOF helicopter characteristics of multi-input multi-output (MIMO),channel coupling,and nonlinearity,a genera linear time delay system is modeled by analyzing the motions on elevation,pitch,and travel axis.By using the reciprocal convex approach,the free weight matrix,and the cone complementarity linearization (CCL) method,the PID tracking controller parameters can be designed if the related linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) are feasible.Finally,a practical experiment of laboratory 3-DOF helicopter is given,and the experimental results show that the proposed method is effective.

Dynamic Surface Control with Nonlinear Disturbance Observer for Uncertain Flight Dynamic System

A new robust control method of a nonlinear flight dynamic system with aerodynamic coefficients and external disturbance has been proposed.The proposed control system is a combination of the dynamic surface control(DSC)and the nonlinear disturbance observer(NDO).DSC technique provides the ability to overcome the″explosion of complexity″problem in backstepping control.NDO is adopted to observe the uncertainties in nonlinear flight dynamic system.It has been proved that the proposed design method can guarantee uniformly ultimately boundedness of all the signals in the closed-loop system by Lyapunov stability theorem.Finally,simulation results show that the proposed controller provides better performance than the traditional nonlinear controller.

H_∞ output tracking control for flight control systems with time-varying delay

For flight control systems with time-varying delay,an H∞output tracking controller is proposed.The controller is designed for the discrete-time state-space model of general aircraft to reduce the effects of uncertainties of the mathematical model,external disturbances,and bounded time-varying delay.It is assumed that the feedback-control loop is closed by the communication network,and the network-based control architecture induces time-delays in the feedback information.Suppose that the time delay has both an upper bound and a lower bound.By using the Lyapunov-Krasovskii function and the linear matrix inequality(LMI),the delay-dependent stability criterion is derived for the time-delay system.Based on the criterion,a state-feedback H∞output tracking controller for systems with norm-bounded uncertainties and time-varying delay is presented.The control scheme is applied to the high incidence research model(HIRM),which shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Sliding Mode Controller Design for Position and Speed Control of Flight Simulator Servo System with Large Friction

Flight simulator is an important device and a typical high-performance position and speed servo system used in the hardware-in-the-loop simulation of flight control system. Friction is the main nonlinear resistance in the flight simulator servo system, especially in a low-speed state. Based on the description of dynamic and static models of a nonlinear Stribeck friction model, this paper puts forward sliding mode controller to overcome the friction, whose stability is proved. Simulation example indicates that the controller can guarantee a high robust performance and have a high precision of position tracking and speed tracking for a flight simulator servo system.

NONLINEAR DYNAMIC INVERSION CONTROL WITH ADAPTIVE COMPENSATION FOR FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM

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APPLICATIONOFNEURALNETWORKTOFLIGHTCONTROLSYSTEMDESIGN

神经网络有很强的自学习功能，将它用于飞行控制系统调参可以收到比较满意的效果。本文基于反向传播网络的研究，给出了神经网络进行控制器参数选择的方法及网络学习算法，讨论了神经网络学习样本的选取方法及整个系统在飞行控制系统控制器参数设计过程中的运行步骤。通过实际设计验证。

MEMS-Based Low-Cost Flight Control System for Small UAVs

Small unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) can be used for various kinds of surveillance and data collec-tion missions. The UAV flight control system is the key to a successful mission. This paper describes a low-cost micro-electro mechanical system-based flight control system for small UAVs. The integrated hard-ware flight control system weighs only 24 g. The system includes a highly-integrated wireless transmission link, which is lighter than traditional links. The flight control provides altitude hold control and global posi-tioning system navigation based on gain scheduling proportional-integral-derivative control. Flight tests to survey the grass quality of a large lawn show that the small UAV can fly autonomously according to a series of pre-arranged waypoints with a controlled altitude while the wireless video system transmits images of the surveillance target to a ground control station.

Zero phase error control based on neural compensation for flight simulator servo system

Using the future desired input value, zero phase error controller enables the overall system’s frequency response exhibit zero phase shift for all frequencies and a small gain error at low frequency range, and based on this, a new algorithm is presented to design the feedforward controller. However, zero phase error controller is only suitable for certain linear system. To reduce the tracking error and improve robustness, the design of the proposed feedforward controller uses a neural compensation based on diagonal recurrent neural network. Simulation and real-time control results for flight simulator servo system show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

RECONFIGURABLE FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEMS DESIGN

A multistage reconfiguring strategy is proposed to deal with the fault tolerance problem of RFCS(the reconfigurable flight control system) in the fault diagnosis process. While in usual schemes the reconfiguring process does not occur until the fault

Design of an Integrated SITL and HITL Simulation System for the Control of a Loitering Aerial Vehicle

An investigation into the aircraft flight simulation and control system is presented in this paper. The study was firstly focused on the establishment of an integrated hardware-in-the-loop(HITL) platform for aircraft flight simulation based on MATLAB/Simulink+dSPACE. The platform combines the abundant software and hardware resources of dSPACE simulation platform to simulate the flight attitude of an aircraft in six-DOF (degree of freedom) motion. Based on the platform,the study was then focused on the flight numerical simulation by taking a loitering aerial vehicle as an example. An aircraft mathematical model was created for a modular design and off-line numerical simulation based on MATLAB/Simulink. Finally,the study was focused on the control system design of the loitering aerial vehicle and conduct of an HITL simulation experiment for the vehicle pitch control. The experiment verifies the system design and control effectiveness. Research results show that the dSPACE simulation system provides a real time good experimental platform to improve the efficiency of study and development of a flight control system.

Nonlinear Intelligent Flight Control for Quadrotor Unmanned Helicopter

Quadrotor unmanned helicopter is a new popular research platform for unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV),thanks to its simple construction,vertical take-off and landing(VTOL)capability.Here a nonlinear intelligent flight control system is developed for quadrotor unmanned helicopter,including trajectory control loop composed of co-controller and state estimator,and attitude control loop composed of brain emotional learning(BEL)intelligent controller.BEL intelligent controller based on mammalian middle brain is characterized as self-learning capability,model-free and robustness.Simulation results of a small quadrotor unmanned helicopter show that the BEL intelligent controller-based flight control system has faster dynamical responses with higher precision than the traditional controller-based system.

Circular Formation Flight Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles With Directed Network and External Disturbance

This paper proposes a new distributed formation flight protocol for unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)to perform coordinated circular tracking around a set of circles on a target sphere.Different from the previous results limited in bidirectional networks and disturbance-free motions,this paper handles the circular formation flight control problem with both directed network and spatiotemporal disturbance with the knowledge of its upper bound.Distinguishing from the design of a common Lyapunov fiunction for bidirectional cases,we separately design the control for the circular tracking subsystem and the formation keeping subsystem with the circular tracking error as input.Then the whole control system is regarded as a cascade connection of these two subsystems,which is proved to be stable by input-tostate stability(ISS)theory.For the purpose of encountering the external disturbance,the backstepping technology is introduced to design the control inputs of each UAV pointing to North and Down along the special sphere(say,the circular tracking control algorithm)with the help of the switching function.Meanwhile,the distributed linear consensus protocol integrated with anther switching anti-interference item is developed to construct the control input of each UAV pointing to east along the special sphere(say,the formation keeping control law)for formation keeping.The validity of the proposed control law is proved both in the rigorous theory and through numerical simulations.