Guaranteed Cost Attitude Tracking Control for Uncertain Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Under Safety Constraints

In this paper,guaranteed cost attitude tracking con-trol for uncertain quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle(QUAV)under safety constraints is studied.First,an augmented system is constructed by the tracking error system and reference system.This transformation aims to convert the tracking control prob-lem into a stabilization control problem.Then,control barrier function and disturbance attenuation function are designed to characterize the violations of safety constraints and tolerance of uncertain disturbances,and they are incorporated into the reward function as penalty items.Based on the modified reward function,the problem is simplified as the optimal regulation problem of the nominal augmented system,and a new Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation is developed.Finally,critic-only rein-forcement learning algorithm with a concurrent learning tech-nique is employed to solve the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equa-tion and obtain the optimal controller.The proposed algorithm can not only ensure the reward function within an upper bound in the presence of uncertain disturbances,but also enforce safety constraints.The performance of the algorithm is evaluated by the numerical simulation.

Comparison of linear and nonlinear aerodynamic parameter estimation approaches for an unmanned aerial vehicle using unscented Kalman filter

Aerodynamic parameter estimation provides an effective way for aerospace system modeling using measured data from flight tests, especially for the purpose of developing elaborate simulation environments and designing control systems of unmanned aerial vehicle （UAV） with short design cycles and reduced cost. However, parameter identification of airplane dynamics by nonlinear mod- els is complicated because of the noisy and biased sensor measurements. Using linear models for system identification is an alternative way if the fidelity can be guaranteed, as control design procedures are better established in linear systems. This paper considers the application and comparison of linear as well as nonlinear aerodynamic parameter estimation approaches of an UAV using unscented Kalman filter （UKF）. It also highlights the degree of deterioration of the linear model in the UKF identification process. The results show that both the linear and nonlinear methodologies can accurately estimate the control system design. Furthermore, considering loss of accuracy to be negligible, the linear model can be employed for control design of the UAV as presented here.

A Data-Driven Adaptive Method for Attitude Control of Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In this paper, a real-time online data-driven adaptive method is developed to deal with uncertainties such as high nonlinearity, strong coupling, parameter perturbation and external disturbances in attitude control of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Firstly, a model-free adaptive control (MFAC) method requiring only input/output (I/O) data and no model information is adopted for control scheme design of angular velocity subsystem which contains all model information and up-mentioned uncertainties. Secondly, the internal model control (IMC) method featured with less tuning parameters and convenient tuning process is adopted for control scheme design of the certain Euler angle subsystem. Simulation results show that, the method developed is obviously superior to the cascade PID (CPID) method and the nonlinear dynamic inversion (NDI) method.

Estimation and verification of green tide biomass based on UAV remote sensing

Since 2007,the Yellow Sea green tide has broken out every summer,causing great harm to the environment and society.Although satellite remote sensing(RS)has been used in biomass research,there are several shortcomings,such as mixed pixels,atmospheric interference,and difficult field validation.The biomass of green tide has been lacking a high-precision estimation method.In this study,high-resolution unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)RS was used to quantitatively map the biomass of green tides.By utilizing experimental data from previous studies,a robust relationship was established to link biomass to the red-green-blue floating algae index(RGB-FAI).Then,the lab-based model for green tide biomass from visible images taken by the UAV camera was developed and validated by field measurements.Re sults show that the accurate and cost-effective method is able to estimate the green tide biomass and its changes in given local waters of the near and far seas.The study provided an effective complement to the traditional satellite RS,as well as high-precision quantitative techniques for decision-making in disaster management.

Geo-location for Ground Target with Multiple Observations Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

In order to improve the target location accuracy of unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV),a novel target location method using multiple observations is proposed.Firstly,the camera intrinsic parameters are calibrated.Then,the weighted least squares estimation is used to improve the localization precision because the traditional crossover method is vulnerable to noise and has low precision.By repeatedly measuring the same target point,a nonlinear observation equation is established and then covered to linear equations using Taylor expansion.The weighted matrix is obtained according to the height of the measurement point and the camera optic axis pointing angle,and then the weighted least squares estimation is used to calculate the target position iteratively.Finally,the effectiveness and robustness of this method is verified by numerical simulation and flight test.The results show that this method can effectively improve the precision of target location.

Improved adaptively robust estimation algorithm for GNSS spoofer considering continuous observation error

Once the spoofer has controlled the navigation sys-tem of unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV),it is hard to effectively control the error convergence to meet the threshold condition only by adjusting parameters of estimation if estimation of the spoofer on UAV has continuous observation error.Aiming at this problem,the influence of the spoofer’s state estimation error on spoofing effect and error convergence conditions is theoretically analyzed,and an improved adaptively robust estimation algo-rithm suitable for steady-state linear quadratic estimator is pro-posed.It enables the spoofer’s estimator to reliably estimate UAV status in real time,improves the robustness of the estima-tor in responding to observation errors,and accelerates the con-vergence time of error control.Simulation experiments show that the mean value of normalized innovation squared(NIS)is reduced by 88.5%,and the convergence time of NIS value is reduced by 76.3%,the convergence time of true trajectory error of UAV is reduced by 42.3%,the convergence time of estimated trajectory error of UAV is reduced by 67.4%,the convergence time of estimated trajectory error of the spoofer is reduced by 33.7%,and the convergence time of broadcast trajectory error of the spoofer is reduced by 54.8%when the improved algorithm is used.The improved algorithm can make UAV deviate from pre-set trajectory to spoofing trajectory more effectively and more subtly.

Wind disturbance rejection control based on the dynamic parameters estimation of quadrotors UAV

The turbulence or gust in quadrotor flight environment causes drastic changes in the unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)aerodynamic parameters.Especially,rotor thrust coefficient and reaction torque coefficient of the UAV encounter uncertainty fluctuation,which may undermine the control performance.A real-time estimation strategy for these aerodynamic parameters is proposed to improve the identification on the disturbance.First,the unscented Kalman filter(UKF)algorithm is used to estimate the UAV states and aerodynamic parameters.Then,a double-loop structure,consisting of position and attitude,is designed for the trajectory tracking control.In the outer loop,a proportional-derivative controller is adopted to carry out position tracking and provide Euler angle references for the inner loop,called attitude controller.Moreover,the attitude controller is designed using an inverse dynamic technique.The main contribution of this study is to propose a joint estimation on the aerodynamic parameters with wind disturbance as well as the UAV states.This strategy plays an important role in refining time-varying parameters of wind disturbance.A number of simulations are executed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Distributed bearing-based formation control of unmanned aerial vehicle swarm via global orientation estimation

Most existing formation control approaches for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)swarm assume that global position and global coordinate frame are directly available for each agent.To extend the application domain,this paper proposes a distributed bearing-based formation control scheme,without any reliance on global position or global coordinate frame.The interactions among UAVs are described by a directed topology with two-leader structure.To address the issue of unavailable global coordinate frame,we first present a distributed orientation estimation law for each UAV to determine its orientation under the coordinate frame of the first leader.Based on the orientation estimation,we then design a bearing-based formation control law to globally asymptotically track target moving formations.Finally,simulation results are provided to validate the proposed method,which show that the translation,scale and orientation of the formation can be flexibly controlled via two leaders.

An investigation on the best-fit models for sugarcane biomass estimation by linear mixedeffect modelling on unmanned aerial vehicle-based multispectral images:A case study of Australia

Due to the worldwide population growth and the increasing needs for sugar-based products,accurate estimation of sugarcane biomass is critical to the precise monitoring of sugarcane growth.This research aims to find the imperative predictors correspond to the random and fixed effects to improve the accuracy of wet and dry sugarcane biomass estimations by integrating ground data and multi-temporal images from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs).The multispectral images and biomass measurements were obtained at different sugarcane growth stages from 12 plots with three nitrogen fertilizer treatments.Individual spectral bands and different combinations of the plots,growth stages,and nitrogen fertilizer treatments were investigated to address the issue of selecting the correct fixed and random effects for the modelling.A model selection strategy was applied to obtain the optimum fixed effects and their proportional contribution.The results showed that utilizing Green,Blue,and Near Infrared spectral bands on models rather than all bands improved model performance for wet and dry biomass estimates.Additionally,the combination of plots and growth stages outperformed all the candidates of random effects.The proposed model outperformed the Multiple Linear Regression(MLR),Generalized Linear Model(GLM),and Generalized Additive Model(GAM)for wet and dry sugarcane biomass,with coefficients of determination(R2)of 0.93 and 0.97,and Root Mean Square Error(RMSE)of 12.78 and 2.57 t/ha,respectively.This study indicates that the proposed model can accurately estimate sugarcane biomasses without relying on nitrogen fertilizers or the saturation/senescence problem of Vegetation Indices(VIs)in mature growth stages.

IMPROVED PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR INTELLIGENTLY SETTING UAV ATTITUDE CONTROLLER PARAMETERS

An improved particle swarm optimization （PSO） algorithm is investigated in the optimization of the attitude controller parameters of unmanned aerial vehicle （UAV）. Considering the stagnation phenomenon in the later phase of the basic PSO algorithm caused by the diversity scarcity of particles, a modified PSO algorithm is presented. For the basic PSO algorithm, the velocity of each particle is adjusted according to the inertia motion, the swarm previous best position and its own previous best position. However, in the improved PSO algorithm, each particle only learns from another randomly selected particle with higher performance, besides keeping the inertia motion. The inertia weight of the improved PSO algorithm is a random number. The modification decreases the uncertain parameters of the algorithm, simplifies the learning mechanism of the particle, and enhances the diversity of the swarm. Furthermore, a UAV attitude control system is built, and the improved PSO algorithm is applied in the optimized tuning of four controller parameters. Simulation results show that the improved PSO algorithm has stronger global searching ability than the common PSO algorithms, and obtains better UAV attitude control parameters.

Mobility control of unmanned aerial vehicle as communication relay in airborne multi-user systems

In this paper, a model-based adaptive mobility control method for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV) acting as a communication relay is presented, which is intended to improve the network performance in airborne multi-user systems. The mobility control problem is addressed by jointly considering unknown Radio Frequency(RF) channel parameters, unknown multi-user mobility, and non-available Angle of Arrival(AoA) information of the received signal. A Kalman filter and a least-square-based estimation algorithm are used to predict the future user positions and estimate the RF channel parameters between the users and the UAV, respectively. Two different relay application cases are considered: end-to-end and multi-user communications. A line search algorithm is proposed for the former, with its stability given and proven, whereas a simplified gradient-based algorithm is proposed for the latter to provide a target relay position at each decision time step, decreasing the two-dimensional search to a one-dimensional search. Simulation results show that the proposed mobility control algorithms can drive the UAV to reach or track the optimal relay position movement, as well as improving network performance. The proposed method reflects the properties of using different metrics as objective network performance functions.

Adaptive Attitude Control for Multi-MUAV Systems With Output Dead-Zone and Actuator Fault

Many mechanical parts of multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle(MUAV)can easily produce non-smooth phenomenon and the external disturbance that affects the stability of MUAV.For multi-MUAV attitude systems that experience output dead-zone,external disturbance and actuator fault,a leader-following consensus anti-disturbance and fault-tolerant control(FTC)scheme is proposed in this paper.In the design process,the effect of unknown nonlinearity in multi-MUAV systems is addressed using neural networks(NNs).In order to balance out the effects of external disturbance and actuator fault,a disturbance observer is designed to compensate for the aforementioned negative impacts.The Nussbaum function is used to address the problem of output dead-zone.The designed fault-tolerant controller guarantees that the output signals of all followers and leader are synchronized by the backstepping technique.Finally,the effectiveness of the control scheme is verified by simulation experiments.

Multiple Emitters Localization by UAV with Nested Linear Array:System Scheme and 2D-DOA Estimation Algorithm

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)equipped with uniform linear array has been applied to multiple emitters localization.Meanwhile,nested linear array enables to enhance localization resolution and achieve under-determined Direction of Arrival(DOA)estimation.In this paper,we propose a new system structure for emitters localization that combines the UAV with nested linear array,which is capable of significantly increasing the positioning accuracy of interested targets.Specifically,a localization scheme is designed to obtain the paired two-dimensional DOA(2D-DOA,i.e.azimuth and elevation angles)estimates of emitters by nested linear array with UAV.Furthermore,we propose an improved DOA estimation algorithm for emitters localization that utilizes Discrete Fourier Transform(DFT)method to obtain coarse DOA estimates,subsequently,achieve the fine DOA estimates by sparse representation.The proposed algorithm has lower computational complexity because the coarse DOA estimates enable to shrink the range of over-complete dictionary of sparse representation.In addition,compared to traditional uniform linear array,improved 2D-DOA estimation performance of emitters can be obtained with a nested linear array.Extensive simulation results testify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A New Approach to Estimate True Position of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in an INS/GPS Integration System in GPS Spoofing Attack Conditions

This paper presents a new approach to estimate the true position of an unmanned aerial vehicle （UAV） in the conditions of spoofing attacks on global positioning system （GPS） receivers. This approach consists of two phases, the spoofing detection phase which is accomplished by hypothesis test and the trajectory estimation phase which is carried out by applying the adapted particle filters to the integrated inertial navigation system （INS） and GPS. Due to nonlinearity and unfavorable impacts of spoofing signals on GPS receivers, deviation in position calculation is modeled as a cumulative uniform error. This paper also presents a procedure of applying adapted particle swarm optimization filter （PSOF） to the INS/GPS integration system as an estimator to compensate spoofing attacks. Due to memory based nature of PSOF and benefits of each particle＇s experiences, application of PSOF algorithm in the INS/GPS integ- ration system leads to more precise positioning compared with general particle filter （PF） and adaptive unscented particle filer （AUPF） in the GPS spoofing attack scenarios. Simulation results show that the adapted PSOF algorithm is more reliable and accurate in estim- ating the true position of UAV in the condition of spoofing attacks. The validation of the proposed method is done by root mean square error （RMSE） test.

Adaptive Noise Identification in Vision-assisted Motion Estimation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Vision localization methods have been widely used in the motion estimation of unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs).The noise of the vision location result is usually modeled as a white Gaussian noise so that this location result could be utilized as the observation vector in the Kalman filter to estimate the motion of the vehicle.Since the noise of the vision location result is affected by external environment,the variance of the noise is uncertain.However,in previous researches,the variance is usually set as a fixed empirical value,which will lower the accuracy of the motion estimation.The main contribution of this paper is that we proposed a novel adaptive noise variance identification(ANVI) method,which utilizes the special kinematic properties of the UAV for frequency analysis and then adaptively identifies the variance of the noise.The adaptively identified variance is used in the Kalman filter for more accurate motion estimation.The performance of the proposed method is assessed by simulations and field experiments on a quadrotor system.The results illustrate the effectiveness of the method.

Micro-Doppler feature extraction of micro-rotor UAV under the background of low SNR

Micro-Doppler feature extraction of unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)is important for their identification and classification.Noise and the motion state of the UAV are the main factors that may affect feature extraction and estimation precision of the micro-motion parameters.The spectrum of UAV echoes is reconstructed to strengthen the micro-motion feature and reduce the influence of the noise on the condition of low signal to noise ratio(SNR).Then considering the rotor rate variance of UAV in the complex motion state,the cepstrum method is improved to extract the rotation rate of the UAV,and the blade length can be intensively estimated.The experiment results for the simulation data and measured data show that the reconstruction of the spectrum for the UAV echoes is helpful and the relative mean square root error of the rotating speed and blade length estimated by the proposed method can be improved.However,the computation complexity is higher and the heavier computation burden is required.

Wind Estimation for UAV Based on Multi-sensor Information Fusion

Aiming at the requirements of accurate target positioning and autonomous capability for adapting to the environmental changes of unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV),a new method for wind estimation and airspeed calibration is proposed.The method is implemented to obtain both wind speed and wind direction based on the information from a GPS receiver,an air data computer and a magnetic compass,combining with the velocity vector triangle relationships among ground speed,wind speed and air speed.Considering the installation error of Pitot tube,cubature Kalman filter(CKF)is applied to determine proportionality calibration coefficient of true airspeed,thus improving the accuracy of wind field information further.The entire autonomous flight simulation is performed in a constant 2-D wind using a digital simulation platform for UAV.Simulation results show that the wind speed and wind direction can be accurately estimated both in straight line and in turning segment during the path tracking by using the proposed method.The measurement accuracies of the wind speed and wind direction are 0.62 m/s and2.57°,respectively.

基于DNN的无人机数据OFDM传输技术

针对无人机信道含多径、多普勒频移,还易受到外来干扰和高功率放大带来的非线性失真影响的问题,提出一种基于深度神经网络(deep neural network,DNN)的无人机正交频分复用(orthogonal frequency division multiplexing,OFDM)数据传输技术。下行链路采用OFDM系统,在接收端进行解调之后利用最小二乘(least square,LS)信道估计和迫零(zero forcing,ZF)算法做初步信号检测,然后输入到由BiLSTM和全连接层组成的DNN中进行信道估计和信号检测优化,并恢复数据流。仿真结果表明,与传统插值方法相比,所提方法在无人机起降、飞行和盘旋等3种状态下,信道估计性能具有明显优势,比特误差率性能提升至少一个数量级;在非线性失真和外来干扰的影响下,所提方法仍具有显著性能优势,不仅简化了系统对非线性失真和干扰的处理模块,而且提高了系统的可靠性。

Gradient Descent Algorithm for Small UAV Parameter Estimation System

A gradient descent algorithm with adjustable parameter for attitude estimation is developed,aiming at the attitude measurement for small unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)in real-time flight conditions.The accelerometer and magnetometer are introduced to construct an error equation with the gyros,thus the drifting characteristics of gyroscope can be compensated by solving the error equation utilized by the gradient descent algorithm.Performance of the presented algorithm is evaluated using a self-proposed micro-electro-mechanical system(MEMS)based attitude heading reference system which is mounted on a tri-axis turntable.The on-ground,turntable and flight experiments indicate that the estimation attitude has a good accuracy.Also,the presented system is compared with an open-source flight control system which runs extended Kalman filter(EKF),and the results show that the attitude control system using the gradient descent method can estimate the attitudes for UAV effectively.

Quaternions Complementary Filter for Attitude Algorithm Research

Quatemions complementary filter attitude algorithm was conducted on the unmanned aerial vehicle （UAV） platform. This introduces traditional attitude algorithm and attitude quaternion complementary filter algorithm difference, and the attitude quatemion complementary filter algorithm realization are introduced in details