IntroductionThis paper proposes a novel approach to As the use of Remotely Operated modeling the four quadrant dynamic response Underwater Vehicles becomes more of thrusters as used for the motion control of widespread and their tasking more complex ROV and AUV underwater vehicles. The in deeper waters, there is a need to free the significance is that these vehicles are small in vehicle from the power and signal tether, and size and respond quickly to commands.to increase both the level of control autonomy Precision in motion control will require and the maneuvering precision of these further understanding of thruster performance underwater robots. In a recent paper, Yoerger than is currently available. The model et. al. (1990) point out that Underwater includes a four quadrant mapping of the Vehicle thrusters must be properly modeled if propeller blades lift and drag forces and is good results are to be obtained for the vehicle coupled with motor and fluid system motion control. Thrusters are comprised of dynamics. A series of experiments is propellers driven by a motor -the usual way described for both long and short period in which ships have been propelled through triangular, as well as square wave inputs.the seaway since the days of commercial The model is compared favorably with sailing ships. However, while there is a long experimental data for a variety of differing history of theoretical research, experimental conditions and predicts that force overshoots validation and practical experiential are observed under conditions of rapid knowledge concerning the performance of command changes. Use of the model will ships propellers, the issues relating to the improve the control of dynamic thrust on control of Remotely Operated Vehicles these vehicles.(ROVs) and Autonomous Underwater Yoerger et. al. [I], developed a lumped parameter model of the dynamic response of an ROV thruster that went beyond the popular notion that, for a given unit with fixed pitch blading, thrust and input torque are related to the modified square of the propeller rotational rate and the angle of advance.They introduced the idea that fluid momentum considerations in the thruster shrouding area gives rise to a time lag in the response of thrust to stepwise inputs of motor torque. Experimental results under steady state conditions for single quadrant operation certainly verified the well known square law relationship between thrust and propeller rotational speed, and it did appear that the thrust response had long lag times at low thrust levels. However, little details were provided of the actual experimental thrust data under varied experimental conditions. For instance, dynamic energy balance arguments were applied but dynamic momentum arguments were ignored in the formulation of the thrust equation. Also, an instantaneous relationship between propeller rotational rate and the lumped parameter measure of flowrate was used which cannot be supported in reality.We believe that such a model is still insufficient to understand th...

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This paper describes the development and analysis of gain-scheduled, multi-variable H∞ control law for the conversion of a linear parameter varying (LPV) model of a High-Speed Autonomous Rotorcraft Vehicle (HARVee), an experimental tilt-wing aircraft. Tilt-wing aircraft combine the high-speed cruise capabilities of a conventional airplane with the vertical takeoff and station keeping abilities of a helicopter by rotating their wings at the fuselage. Changing between cruise and hover flight modes in mid-air is referred to as the conversion process, or simply conversion. A nonlinear aerodynamic model was previously developed that captures the unique dynamics of the tilt-wing aircraft. An H∞ design methodology was used to develop linear controllers along various operating points of a conversion trajectory. The development of these control systems was governed not only by performance specifications at each particular operating point, but also by the unique requirements of a gain-scheduled conversion control system. The performance of the resulting conversion closed-loop systems is analyzed in the frequency and time domains. Performance robustness with respect to variation in the location of the center of gravity (cg) has been studied.