Robust fixed-time flight controller for a dual-system convertible UAV in the cruise mode

This paper investigates the attitude tracking control problem for the cruise mode of a dual-system convertible unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)in the presence of parameter uncertainties,unmodeled uncertainties and wind disturbances.First,a fixed-time disturbance observer(FXDO)based on the bi-limit homogeneity theory is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance of the convertible UAV model.Then,a fixed-time integral sliding mode control(FXISMC)is combined with the FXDO to achieve strong robustness and chattering reduction.Bi-limit homogeneity theory and Lyapunov theory are applied to provide detailed proof of the fixed-time stability.Finally,numerical simulation experimental results verify the robustness of the proposed algorithm to model parameter uncertainties and wind disturbances.In addition,the proposed algorithm is deployed in a open-source UAV autopilot and its effectiveness is further demonstrated by hardware-in-the-loop experimental results.

Research on Teaching Methods of Flight Control Principles

With the rapid development of China’s civil aviation industry,the teaching method of operating knowledge of flight principles has changed greatly,which creates a good implementation environment to improve the safety of civil aviation in our country.At present,the main training content of air route transport pilots in China is basic aviation theory,initial flight training,airline modification,etc.The principles of flight control are an important part of basic aviation theoretical knowledge training,which will involve a large number of flight technology training content,instructors will also be based on the pilot type.Teaching flight control theory and practical knowledge requires relatively high theoretical learning ability of students,and the learning effect of this part of theoretical knowledge will directly affect the quality of subsequent learning,but also directly affect the effectiveness of flight training.This paper focuses on the analysis of the basic concepts of flight control,studies the existing problems in the teaching of flight control principles,summarizes the teaching measures of flight control principles,aiming to provide a reference to teaching personnel.

MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF SELF-REPAIRING FLIGHT CONTROL

The most prospective method for certain structural failures and damages that cannot employ redundancy is self-repairing techniques, to ensure especially the maximum flight safety. Based on the characters of self-repairing aircraft, this paper states some basic assumptions of the self-repairing aircraft, and puts forward some special new conceptions concerning the self-repairing aircraft: control input, operating input, command input, repair input and operating and control factor as well as their relationships. Thus it provides a simple and reliable mathematical model structure for the research on the self-repairing control of the aircraft.

ADAPTIVE BACKSTEPPING FLIGHT CONTROL WITH ACTUATOR SATURATION

Because actuator satu ration can become a problem or even a disaster in flight control system, the con sideration of actuator saturation in the design phase may indeed reduce the degr ee of conservativeness of an flight control system (FCS) and thus noticeably enh ance the performance of the FCS. Deflection limits and rate limits are both cons idered in a new adaptive backstepping FCS design process. The key of the method is that a new control Lyapunov function (CLF) and a control law are chosen when the actuator saturation occurs. This idea results from that there must be a vari ation in the pseudo-control at saturation. The whole progress is a modification of an early presented method: adaptive backstepping control scheme. The stabili ty is proved and verified successfully. The conclusion and some comments about t his method are given in the end.

APPLICATION OF HYBRID AERO-ENGINE MODEL FOR INTEGRATED FLIGHT/PROPULSION OPTIMAL CONTROL

The real-time capability of integrated flight/propulsion optimal control （IFPOC） is studied. An appli- cation is proposed for IFPOC by combining the onboard hybrid aero-engine model with sequential quadratic pro- gramming （SQP）. Firstly, a steady-state hybrid aero-engine model is designed in the whole flight envelope with a dramatic enhancement of real-time capability. Secondly, the aero-engine performance seeking control including the maximum thrust mode and the minimum fuel-consumption mode is performed by SQP. Finally, digital simu- lations for cruise and accelerating flight are carried out. Results show that the proposed method improves real- time capability considerably with satisfactory effectiveness of optimization.

Novel robust fault diagnosis method for flight control systems

A novel robust fault diagnosis scheme, which possesses fault estimate capability as well as fault diagnosis property, is proposed. The scheme is developed based on a suitable combination of the adaptive multiple model （AMM） and unknown input observer （UIO）. The main idea of the proposed scheme stems from the fact that the actuator Lock-in-Place fault is unknown （when and where the actuator gets locked are unknown）, and multiple models are used to describe different fault scenarios, then a bank of unknown input observers are designed to implement the disturbance de-coupling. According to Lyapunov theory, proof of the robustness of the newly developed scheme in the presence of faults and disturbances is derived. Numerical simulation results on an aircraft example show satisfactory performance of the proposed algorithm.

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.

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.

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.

Control for going from hovering to small speed flight of a model insect

The longitudinal steady-state control for going from hovering to small speed flight of a model insect is studied, using the method of computational fluid dynamics to compute the aerodynamic derivatives and the techniques based on the linear theories of stability and control for determining the non-zero equilibrium points. Morphological and certain kinematical data of droneflies are used for the model insect. A change in the mean stroke angle （δФ） results in a horizontal forward or backward flight; a change in the stroke amplitude （δФ） or a equal change in the down- and upstroke angles of attack （δα1） results in a vertical climb or decent; a proper combination of δФ and δФ controls （or δФ and δα1 controls） can give a flight of any （small） speed in any desired direction.

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.

Survey on nonlinear reconfigurable flight control

An overview on nonlinear reconfigurable flight control approaches that have been demonstrated in flight-test or highfidelity simulation is presented. Various approaches for reconfigurable flight control systems are considered, including nonlinear dynamic inversion, parameter identification and neural network technologies, backstepping and model predictive control approaches. The recent research work, flight tests, and potential strength and weakness of each approach are discussed objectively in order to give readers and researchers some reference. Finally, possible future directions and open problems in this area are addressed.

Control allocation for a class of morphing aircraft with integer constraints based on Lévy flight

Aiming at tracking control of a class of innovative control effector(ICE) aircraft with distributed arrays of actuators, this paper proposes a control allocation scheme based on the Lévy flight.Different from the conventional aircraft control allocation problem,the particular characteristic of actuators makes the actuator control command totally subject to integer constraints. In order to tackle this problem, first, the control allocation problem is described as an integer programming problem with two desired objectives. Then considering the requirement of real-time, a metaheuristic algorithm based on the Lévy flight is introduced to tackling this problem. In order to improve the searching efficiency, several targeted and heuristic strategies including variable step length and inherited population initialization according to feedback and so on are designed. Moreover, to prevent the incertitude of the metaheuristic algorithm and ensure the flight stability, a guaranteed control strategy is designed. Finally, a time-varying simulation model is introduced to verifying the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The contrastive simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme achieves superior tracking performance with appropriate actuator dynamics and computational time, and the improvements for efficiency are active and the parameter settings are reasonable.

Quadcopter UAV Modeling and Automatic Flight Control Design

The mathematical model of quadcopter-unmanned aerial vehicle （UAV） is derived by using two approaches： One is the Newton-Euler approach which is formulated using classical meehanics; and other is the Euler-Lagrange approach which describes the model in terms of kinetic （translational and rotational） and potential energy. The proposed quadcopter＇s non-linear model is incorporated with aero-dynamical forces generated by air resistance, which helps aircraft to exhibits more realistic behavior while hovering. Based on the obtained model, the suitable control strategy is developed, under which two effective flight control systems are developed. Each control system is created by cascading the proportional-derivative （PD） and T-S fuzzy controllers that are equipped with six and twelve feedback signals individually respectively to ensure better tracking, stabilization, and response. Both pro- posed flight control designs are then implemented with the quadcopter model respectively and multitudinous simulations are conducted using MATLAB/Simulink to analyze the tracking performance of the quadcopter model at various reference inputs and trajectories.

New robust fault-tolerant controller for self-repairing flight control systems

A new robust fault-tolerant controller scheme integrating a main controller and a compensator for the self-repairing flight control system is discussed.The main controller is designed for high performance of the original faultless system.The compensating controller can be seen as a standalone loop added to the system to compensate the effects of fault guaranteeing the stability of the system.A design method is proposed using nonlinear dynamic inverse control as the main controller and nonlinear extended state observer-based compensator.The stability of the whole closed-loop system is analyzed.Feasibility and validity of the new controller is demonstrated with an aircraft simulation example.

HIERARCHICAL APPROACH AND ITS APPLICATION TO INTEGRATED FLIGHT／PROPULSION CONTROL SYSTEM

A new model and design method for integrated flight/propulsion control system are presented. To avoid solving higher order Riccati equations, a hierarchical optimization method is developed based on structure perturbation. In the new method, designing of a linear (luadrate regulator (LQR) is divided into two steps: (1 ) computingfeedback gain matrix of individual subsystem, while the association among these subsystems is omittd, and (2) according to the optimization method of LoR, computing thecompensation gain matrix for each subsystem using input perturbation approach. Simulation and application show that not only the results of the new method is as good as that ofan ordinary LQR, but also the efficiency is much higher than that of LQR.

Interval Criterion of Robust Stability for Nonlinear System and Its Application to Flight Control

Robust stability for a series of nonlinear systems is presented in this paper. Through different region descriptions, the problem of stability for a complex nonlinear system is transformed into ones of the robust stabilities of several linear time-invariant systems. To get useful robust stability conditions, an expression for interval system is given, and the relationship between the internal stability and low- or supper-bound stability of interval systems is discussed. Thus, the polynomial matrix inequality for the determination of system robust stability is developed. Based on the equivalency transformation of the inequality, the solvable condition of the inequality is obtained. By means of the condition, robust stability theorem for interval systems is presented and a new design method of feedback control for nonlinear system is achieved. Applications to flight controller design show that the new method is efficient for uncertain system design.

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.

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.

Stabilization control of a bumblebee in hovering and forward flight

Our previous study shows that the hovering and forward flight of a bumblebee do not have inherent stability （passive stability）. But the bumblebees are observed to fly stably. Stabilization control must have been applied. In this study, we investigate the longitudinal stabilization control of the bumblebee. The method of computational fluid dynamics is used to compute the control derivatives and the techniques of eigenvalue and eigenvector analysis and modal decomposition are used for solving the equations of motion. Controllability analysis shows that at all flight speeds considered, although inherently unstable, the flight is controllable. By feedbacking the state variables, i.e. vertical and horizontal velocities, pitching rate and pitch angle （which can be measured by the sensory system of the insect）, to produce changes in stroke angle and angle of attack of the wings, the flight can be stabilized, explaining why the bumblebees can fly stably even if they are passively unstable.