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.

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.

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.

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.

APPLICATIONOFNEURALNETWORKTOFLIGHTCONTROLSYSTEMDESIGN

Artificial neural network (ANN) has a great capability of self learning. The application of neural network to flight controller design can get good result. This paper studies the method of choosing controller parameters using neural network with Back Propagation (B P) algorithm. Design and simulation results show that this method can be used in flight control system design.

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.

New Stability Condition of T-S Fuzzy Systems and Design of Robust Flight Control Principle

Unlike the previous research works analyzing the stability of the T-S （Takagi-Sugeno） fuzzy model, an extension on the stability condition of T-S fuzzy systems with a different strategy is provided. In the strategy a new variable, which is relative to the grade of fuzzy membership function, is introduced to the stability analysis and a new stability conclusion is deduced. The definition of stability condition in this paper is different from previous works, though they are similar in form. With the proposed method, the simulation in flight control law shows a better effectiveness.

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.

A REVERSED-FRAME NORMALIZATION DESIGN OF ROBUST FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM

In this paper, a discussion is devoted to the theory and method of a reversed-frame normalization design to robust flight control system. The robust stability theory of the normal transfer function matrix with the same characteristic gain loci is proved. An example of flight control system design shows the application and advantage of this method.

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.

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.

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF GUST RESPONSEALLEVIATION CONTROL SYSTEM FOR HELICOPTERS

Gust response alleviation is very important for helicopters which have strong coupling and vibration. Gust disturbance not only influences the ride quality and the precision of the weapon delivery, but also affects to the structural fatigue load and the strength. The method of an optimal control law to suppress the gust disturbance for helicopters is presented. The optimization requires the minimization of the vertical overload at the pilot′s seat, the attitude variation and the control energy consumption under the gust disturbance. Based on the original control system, the new system can be easily realized by adding a vertical speed feedback passage. In order to develop the real-time operational flight control system, the optimized control law is written in C language. The hybrid simulations prove that the performance of gust response alleviation and the efficiency of digitalization are satisfactory.

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.

Backstepping-based active fault-tolerant control for a class of uncertain SISO nonlinear systems

Active fault-tolerant control is investigated for a class of uncertain SISO nonlinear flight control systems based on the adaptive observer, feedback linearization and backstepping theory.Firstly an adaptive observer is constructed to estimate the fault in the faulty system.A new fault updating law is presented to simplify the assumption conditions of the adaptive observer.The asymptotical stability of the observer and the uniform ultimate boundedness of the fault estimation error are guaranteed by Lyapunov theorem.Then a backstepping-based active fault-tolerant controller is designed for the faulty system.The asymptotical stability of the closed-loop system and uniform ultimate boundedness of the tracking error are proved based on Lyapunov theorem.The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated through the numerical simulation of a flight control system.

BLOCK DIAGONAL FORM AND BLOCK DIAGONAL CONTROLLER OF NONLINEAR SYSTEMS

A block diagonal form about a nonlinear system is defined. Based on the de finition, a design method ca1led block diagonal controller (BDC) is proPOsed bo feedbacklinearization. Thus, a linearization design of a class of nonlinear system can be simply re-alized. The result of design has been proved by mathematical simulation of a certain anti-ship missile.

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.

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.

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.