Disturbance Observer-Based Safe Tracking Control for Unmanned Helicopters With Partial State Constraints and Disturbances

In this paper, a disturbance observer-based safe tracking control scheme is proposed for a medium-scale unmanned helicopter with rotor flapping dynamics in the presence of partial state constraints and unknown external disturbances. A safety protection algorithm is proposed to keep the constrained states within the given safe-set. A second-order disturbance observer technique is utilized to estimate the external disturbances. It is shown that the desired tracking performance of the controlled unmanned helicopter can be achieved with the application of the backstepping approach, dynamic surface control technique, and Lyapunov method. Finally, the availability of the proposed control scheme has been shown by simulation results.

Adaptive Backstepping Tracking Control of a 6-DOF Unmanned Helicopter

This paper presents an adaptive backstepping control design for a class of unmanned helicopters with parametric uncertainties. The control objective is to let the helicopter track some pre-defined position and yaw trajectories. In order to facilitate the control design, we divide the helicopter s dynamic model into three subsystems. The proposed controller combines the backstepping method with online parameter update laws to achieve the control objective. The global asymptotical stability(GAS) of the closed-loop system is proved by a Lyapunov based stability analysis. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the controller can achieve good tracking performance in the presence of parametric uncertainties.

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.

Control System Design for an Unmanned Helicopter to Track a Ground Target

Due to potential wide applications,the problem of utilizing an unmanned helicopter to track a ground target has become one of the most active research directions in related areas.However,in most cases,it is possible for a dynamic target to implement evasive actions with strong maneuverability,such as a sudden turn during high-speed movement,to flee from the tracker,which then brings much difficulty for the design of tracking control systems.Currently,most research on this field focuses on utilizing a ground mobile robot to track a high-speed target.Unfortunately,it is very difficult to extend those developed methods to airborne applications due to much more complex dynamices of UAV-target relative motion.This study investiages thoroughly for the problem of using an unmanned helicopter to track a ground target,with particular emphasis on the avoidance of tracking failure caused by the evasive maneuvers of dynamic targets.Specifically,a novel control scheme,which consists of an innovative target tracking controller and a classical flight controller,is proposed for the helicopter-target tracking problem.Wherein,the tracking controller,whose design is the focus of the paper,aims to utilize the motion information of the helicopter and the dynamic target to construct a suitable trajectory for the helicopter,so that when it flies along this trajectory,the relative pose between the helicopter and the dynamic target will be kept consant.When designing the target tracking controller,a novel coordinate transformation is firstly introduced to convert the tracking system into a more compact form convenient for control law design,the desired velocities for the helicopter is then proposed with consideration of the dynamic constraint.The stability of the closed-loop system is finally analyzed by Lyapunov techniques.Based on Matlab/Simulink environment,two groups of simulation are conducted for the helicopter-target tracking control system where the target moves along a linear path and takes a sudden turn during high-speed movement,respectively.As shown by the simulation results,both the distance error and the pointing error are bounded during the tracking process,and they are convergent to zero when the target moves straightly.Moreover,the tracking performance can be adjusted properly to avoid tracking failure due to evasive maneuvers of the target,so as to guarantee superior tracking performance for all kinds of dynamic targets.

Angular velocity dynamics identification of small unmanned helicopter using fuzzy model

Attitude identification method for unmanned helicopter based on fuzzy model at hovering is presented. The dynamical attitude model is considered as basis for attitude control and it is very complex. To reduce the complexity of model, nonlinear model of unmanned helicopter with unknown parameters are to be determined by fuzzy system first and then derivative based gradient method is used to identify unknown parameters of model. Gradient method is used due to ability that fuzzy system is not necessarily to be linear in parameters, therefore all fuzzy sets for input and output can be adjusted. The validity of the proposed model was verified using experimental data obtained by the commercially available flight simulator X-Plane. The simulation results showed high accuracy of the modeling method and attitude dynamics data matched well with experimental data.

Selection of a non-localized landing region for an unmanned helicopter based on an attention model

A new landing region selection algorithm for an unmanned helicopter is proposed based on an attention model.Different from the original attention model,some properties of the possible safe landing regions（e.g.,depth,regional color and motion features）are included in the selection algorithm.Furthermore,regional color and motion features are fused directly into the saliency map because these features do not have the ＂central-peripheral＂property.Experimental results validate the feasibility and efficiency of this approach.

Cable-driven legged landing gear for unmanned helicopter:Prototype design,optimization and performance assessment

Unmanned helicopters equipped with adaptive landing gear will dramatically extend their application especially in dealing with challenging terrains.This study presents a novel cable-driven legged landing gear(CLG)with differential transmission for unmanned helicopters in complex landing environments.To obtain the preferred configuration of the legged mechanism,a multi-objective optimization framework for the CLG is constructed by concurrently considering terrain adaptability,landing stability and reasonable linkage of internal forces.The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithmⅡis employed to numerically acquire the optimal scale parameters that guide the mechanical design of the CLG.An unmanned helicopter prototype equipped with the devised CLG is developed with key performance assessment.Experimental results show that the devised CLG can provide energy-efficient support over uneven terrains(totally driven torque demand less than 0.1 N m)in quasi-static landing tests,and favorable terrain adaptability(posture fluctuation of the fuselage less than±1°)in unknown slope landing tests.These exhibited merits give the proposed CLG the potential to enhance the landing performance of future aircraft in extreme environments.

Effect of wind field below unmanned helicopter on droplet deposition distribution of aerial spraying

Wind field is one of the important factors affecting the distribution characteristics of aerial spraying droplet deposition.In order to reveal the impact mechanism of droplet deposition distribution by the wind field below agricultural unmanned helicopter rotor,in this study,the wind field distribution below uniaxial single-rotor electric unmanned helicopter rotor was measured by using a wireless wind speed sensor network measurement system for unmanned helicopter.The effects of wind field in three directions(X,Y,Z)below the rotor on droplet deposition distribution were analyzed with the condition of aerial spraying droplet deposition in rice canopy,and the regression model was established via variance and regression analyses of experiment results.The results showed that,the wind field in Y direction had a significant effect on droplet deposition in effective spray area,the wind field in Z direction had an extremely significant effect on droplet deposition in effective spray area,and the corresponding significance(sig.)values were 0.011 and 0.000.Furthermore,the wind field in Z direction had a significant effect on the penetrability and uniformity of droplet deposition in effective spray area,the corresponding sig.values were 0.025 and 0.011 respectively.The wind speed in Y direction at the edge of effective spray area had a significant effect on droplet drift,the sig.value was 0.021.In addition,the correlation coefficient R of the regression model was 0.869 between droplet deposition in effective spray area and the wind speed in Y and Z directions,and 0.915 between the uniformity of droplet deposition in effective spray area and the maximum wind speed in Z direction.The result revealed the influencing mechanism of the wind field below the rotor of uniaxial single-rotor electric unmanned helicopter on the distribution of aerial spraying droplet deposition.The results can provide guidance for the actual production application of aerial spraying to reduce liquid drift and improve the utilization rate of pesticide.

Robust control for an unmanned helicopter with constrained flapping dynamics

In this paper, a neural network based adaptive prescribed performance control scheme is proposed for the altitude and attitude tracking system of the unmanned helicopter in the presence of state and output constraints. For handling the state constraints, the barrier Lyapunov function and the saturation function are employed. And, the prescribed performance method is used to deal with the flapping angle constraints for the unmanned helicopter. It is proved that the proposed control approach can ensure that all the signals of the resulting closed-loop system are bounded, and the tracking errors are within the prescribed performance bounds for all time. The numerical simulation is given to illustrate the performance of the proposed scheme.

Optimal flight parameters of unmanned helicopter for tea plantation frost protection

To determine proper flight parameters of an unmanned helicopter for tea plantation frost protection,field experiments were conducted to study the impact of flight height,speed and interval on airflow disturbance and temperature rise around tea canopies based on the analysis and simulation of frost protection with a certain helicopter.The relationship between temperature rise after flight and the above flight parameters was established through a regression orthogonal experiment,based on which the optimal combination of flight parameters was obtained through the single-factor golden section method.The results showed that wind speed around tea canopies decreased with the increase of flight height when flight speed was constant.There was a multivariate linear relationship between temperature rise and flight parameters,and the sequence of flight parameters’influence on frost protection effect was flight interval,flight height,flight speed.The optimal combination of flight parameters were flight height of 4.0 m,flight speed of 6.0 m/s and flight interval of 20 min.After the flight with the above parameters air temperature around tea canopies increased 1.6℃ when background thermal inversion strength was 3.8℃.

System Identification Method for Small Unmanned Helicopter Based on Improved Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper proposes a novel method for Small Unmanned Helicopter （SUH） system identification based on Improved Particle Swarm Optimization （IPSO）. In the proposed IPSO, every particle will do a local search as a ＂self-check＂ before up- dating the global velocity and position. Then, the global best particle is created by a certain number of elitist particles in order to get a rapid rate of convergence during calculation. Thus both the diversity and convergence speed can be taken into considera- tion during a search. Formulated by the first principles derivation, a state-space model is built for the analysis of dynamic modes of an experimental SUH. The helicopter is equipped with an Attitude Heading Reference System （AHRS） and the corresponding data storage modules, which are used for flight test data measurement and recording. After data collection and reconstruction, the input and output data are utilized to determine the corresponding aerodynamic parameters of the state-space model. The predictive accuracy and fidelity of the identified model are verified by making a time-domain comparison between the responses from the simulation model and the responses from actual flight experiments. The results show that the characteristics of the experimental SUH can be determined accurately using the identified model and the new method can be used for SUH system identification with high efficiency and reliability.

Design and test of centrifugal disc type sowing device for unmanned helicopter

In China,it is difficult for manned aircraft to sow seeds in small and scattered plots,especially in areas including hills,swamps,telegraph poles,windbreaks,and residential areas;in such terrain,the sowing machinery cannot function properly.However,unmanned helicopters(UHs)are flexible enough to control and adapt to the complex environments that are not easily accessible by terrain sowing machinery and large agricultural aircraft,which have been widely used in agriculture.In this study,a centrifugal disc-type sowing device for an unmanned helicopter(CDTSDUH)was designed.The factors influencing the seed velocity when the seeds move away from the disc were explored by analyzing the forces of the seed acting on the sowing disc and the wind field of the UHs.The influential factors include the distance from the falling mouth to the center of the disc,the offset angle of the falling mouth,and the rotation speed of the disc.An orthogonal test was designed with the sowing width and the curvature of the sowing area as the indexes.The test results showed that the three factors mentioned above had a greater impact on the sowing width than the curvature of the seeding area.Moreover,the superior parameters of the disc were determined.It was also suggested that the above factor levels had little effect on the offset width of sowing.The results of the test conducted for studying the sowing uniformity of the CDTSDUH indicated that the maximum and minimum difference values among the number of particles of the sampling points in the forward direction was 11 and 8,and the coefficient of variation of the number of particles in each row was more than 20%,indicating less uniformity was achieved when sowing in the lateral(perpendicular to the forward direction)direction,as compared to that in the forward direction.This study determined the ideal values for the radius of particles position,the offsetting angle,and the disc speed of the sowing machinery designed.Furthermore,considering that there are so many factors that influence the manner in which a UH functions,more analysis results and test data of influencing factors need to be acquired by experiments.The uniformity of sowing needs to be further improved.The results provided some theoretical and experimental references for the technology research on the centrifugal disc-type sowing device for UHs.

Design of Yaw Controller for a Small Unmanned Helicopter Based on Improved ADRC

Yaw control is signi¯cant to the attitude control of small unmanned helicopters(SUHs).Since the existing robust control method cannot be applied to the SUH with unknown dynamics and disturbances,this paper proposes an improved active disturbance rejection control(IADRC)to solve the problem.The IADRC obtains the optimal solution of the actuator gain(b0)by gradient descent.Besides,this paper summarizes some experiences during the tuning process of ADRC,which signi¯cantly reduces the di±culty of designing ADRC.Finally,the experimental results show that the proposed method is better than the traditional PID in robust and tracking control performance.

Modified attitude factor graph fusion method for unmanned helicopter under atmospheric disturbance

The Unmanned Aerial Helicopter(UAH)has attracted increasing attention in the military and civil areas with the unique flight performance.The significant impact on the attitude measurement performance of UAHs by the strong airflow disturbance is an essential factor threatening flight safety.To improve the attitude measurement performance of UAHs under atmospheric disturbance,an attitude fusion method over the factor graph is applied and provides the plug-and-play capability.Based on the relationship between position,velocity and attitude,a new attitude correction algorithm for the Modified Attitude Factor Graph Fusion(MAFGF)navigation method is designed and constructed through the fused position and velocity information.Finally,results of simulation and experiment are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Trajectory tracking anti-disturbance control for unmanned aerial helicopter based on disturbance characterization index

This work studies the trajectory tracking control for unmanned aerial helicopter(UAH)system under both matched disturbance and mismatched ones.Initially,to tackle the strong coupling,an input-output feedback linearization method is utilized to simplify the nonlinear UAH system.Secondly,a set of finite-time disturbance observers(FTDOs)are proposed to estimate mismatched disturbances with their successive derivatives,which are utilized to design the feedforward controller via backstepping.Thirdly,as for matched disturbance,by defining the disturbance characterization index(DCI)to determine whether the disturbance is harmful or not for the UAH system,a feedback controller is proposed and a sufficient condition is established to ensure the convergence of the tracking error.Finally,some numerical simulations and comparisons illustrate the validity and advantages of our control scheme.

Downwash distribution of single-rotor unmanned agricultural helicopter on hovering state

The effective coverage and velocity of downwash are directly related to the assemblage of spraying system and spraying effect.The downwash of the unmanned agricultural helicopter(UAH)N-3 was discussed in the paper.The computational fluid dynamics(CFD)methods were used to simulate and analyze the distribution of the downwash,and a wind field measurement device had been designed to test the downwash of UAH N-3.In the tests,the UAH N-3 was raised up to 5.0 m,6.0 m and 7.0 m from the ground,“annular-radial-distribution-point”method was introduced,8 directions separated by an angle of 45°(the radial direction)with the intersection point of the main rotor shaft and the ground plane as the center,0.5 m as the step length for the longitudinal(to 2.5 m)and radial(to 4.0 m)direction to set the sample points,considering the range of the rotor rotating circular area mainly.The 5 m height results of N-3 were fully discussed to describe the downwash distribution with the longitudinal altitude increased and the radial distance increased.The standard deviations of five test altitudes for eight directions were comparatively analyzed,the results showed that the total standard deviation was not greater than 0.6 m/s.The overall relative maximum margin of error calculated from the simulation and measurement data was between 0.6 and 0.7,which verified the credibility of the simulation data.High-order polynomials were used to fitting the simulation and measurement data,the fitting results showed that the polynomial coefficient of determination R^(2) met or exceeded 0.75 when the altitudes were more than 1 m,indicating the fit equation having the reference values.When the altitudes equal or less than 0.5 m,the polynomial coefficient of determination R^(2) was smaller,ranging during 0.3 to 0.7.The study would provide some foundations for the optimization of the assemblage of spraying system on the single-rotor UAH,which would promote China aviation plant protection.

Optimization of variables for maximizing efficacy and efficiency in aerial spray application to cotton using unmanned aerial systems

Aerial spraying can support efficient defoliation without crop contact.With the recent introduction to unmanned aerial system(UAS)for aerial spraying in China,there is a need to determine the optimum application variables to achieve high efficacy and efficiency with low costs.The present research involved field studies across two annual cotton production seasons in North Xinjiang,China.Four factors,including volume rate(A),tank mix including spray adjuvants(B),flight altitude(C),flight speed(D)and three levels of L9(3^(4))orthogonal arrays were carried out to optimize the application parameters for three types of UASs.These included different numbers of rotors as follows:four-rotors,six-rotors and eight-rotors.Spray coverage,distribution uniformity(coefficient of variation(CV)of droplet coverage),rates of cotton defoliation and boll opening,application efficiency and cost were measured and assessed.Results showed that:(1)the rates of defoliation and boll opening by aerial cotton defoliant application could meet the requirement of cotton mechanized harvesting;(2)the optimal scenario for the three UASs was A_(3)B_(2)C_(1)D_(3),Volume rate(A3):48 L/hm^(2);Tank mix and concentration(B_(2)):(Tuotulong 225+Sujie 750+Ethephon 2250)mL/hm^(2),Flight altitude(C_(1)):1.5 m,and Flight speeds(D_(3))for unmanned helicopters with four-rotors,six-rotors and eight-rotors were 3.12 m/s,2.51 m/s and 3.76 m/s,respectively.These results can provide guidance for cotton defoliant aerial spraying in China using UAS.

Flocking control of a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles

Current applications using single unmanned vehicle have been gradually extended to multiple ones due to their increased efficiency in mission accomplishment, expanded coverage areas and ranges, as well as enhanced system reliability. This paper presents a flocking control method with application to a fleet of unmanned quadrotor helicopters （UQHs）. Three critical characteristics of formation keeping, collision avoidance, and velocity matching have been taken into account in the algorithm development to make it capable of accomplishing the desired objectives （like forest/pipeline surveillance） by safely and efficiently operating a group of UQHs. To achieve these, three layered system design philosophy is considered in this study. The first layer is the flocking controller which is designed based on the kinematics of UQH. The modified Cucker and Smale model is used for guaranteeing the convergence of UQHs to flocking, while a repelling force between each two UQHs is also added for ensuring a specified safety distance. The second layer is the motion controller which is devised based on the kinetics of UQH by employing the augmented state-feedback control approach to greatly minimize the steady-state error. The last layer is the UQH system along with its actuators. Two primary contributions have been made in this work： first, different from most of the existing works conducted on agents with double integrator dynamics, a new flocking control algorithm has been designed and implemented on a group of UQHs with nonlinear dynamics. Furthermore, the constraint of fixed neighbouring distance in formation has been relaxed expecting to significantly reduce the complexity caused by the increase of agents number and provide more flexibility to the formation control. Extensive numerical simulations on a group of UQH nonlinear models have been carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.