An airborne experimental test platform: From theory to flight

Dorobantu, Andrei; Johnson, Will; Lie, Fidelis Adhika Pradipta; Taylor, Brian; Murch, Austin; Paw, Yew Chai; Gebre-Egziabher, Demoz; Balas, Gary J.

doi:10.1109/acc.2013.6579912

Cited by 30 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…5. The University of Minnesota UAV Research Group has retrofitted the airframe with custom avionics for enabling research in the areas of real-time control, guidance, navigation, and fault detection [23]. The Ultra Stick 120 has a mass of were later complemented with dynamic wind tunnel tests [25,26].…”

Section: Numerical Examplementioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Loss-of-Control Envelopes via Robust Tracking Analysis

Pfifer

Venkataraman

Seiler

2017

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

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Section: Numerical Examplementioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Loss-of-Control Envelopes via Robust Tracking Analysis

Pfifer

Venkataraman

Seiler

2017

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

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“…The avionics include a sensor suite, a flight control computer, and a telemetry radio. 4,11,12 Baldr has a total of eight aerodynamic control surfaces, each actuated by its own servo motor. These surfaces are labeled in figures 2(a) and 2(b) as flaps (F 1,2 ), ailerons (A 1,2 ), elevators (E 1,2 ), and rudders (R 1,2 ).…”

Section: Iib Technology Demonstration Platformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Safe Flight Using One Aerodynamic Control Surface

Venkataraman

Seiler²

2016

AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference

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Civil unmanned aircraft will need to meet stringent safety standards before they are certified to operate in the national airspace of the United States. Reliability is a key requirement for certification. Most current civil unmanned aircraft are not reliable because of the presence of single points-of-failure and the use of low-reliability components. For example: Many fixed-wing unmanned aircraft are equipped with only two aerodynamic control surfaces. A fault in any one surface will usually spell catastrophe. This paper demonstrates how this single point-of-failure can be removed using multi-variable control laws. A single aerodynamic control surface is shown to be sufficient to stabilize the aircraft and execute a set of limited maneuvers. These limited maneuvers are sufficient to safely fly to a landing spot. This concept is proved using flight tests on an unmanned aircraft at the University of Minnesota. The results are also applicable to manned commercial aircraft. Controllability with one surface indicates the large potential to mitigate faults that might otherwise lead to loss-of-control events. I. Introduction Recently, unmanned aerial vehicles/systems (UAVs/UASs) have found increasing civilian and commercial applications, such as law enforcement, search and rescue, and precision agriculture. These commercial applications require UAVs to operate in civilian airspace. Central to operating UAVs in civilian airspace is the challenge of meeting the stringent safety standards set by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In 2012, the United States Congress passed H.R.658 1-the FAA Modernization and Reform Act-in order to facilitate the safe integration of UASs into the national airspace. In particular, section 332 of H.R.658 mandates the FAA to "provide for the safe integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system as soon as practicable, but not later than September 30, 2015." More recently, the FAA released the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. 2 This is thought to be the precursor to the impending release of detailed policy. This brings in legislative and policy dimensions to what is academically seen as a technical challenge. To put this challenge in perspective, consider the current safety standards set by the FAA for manned commercial aircraft. In order for a manned commercial aircraft to be certified, there should be no more than one catastrophic failure per 10 9 flight hours. Commercial aircraft manufacturers, such as Boeing, meet the 10 −9 failures-per-flight-hour standard by utilizing hardware redundancy. For example, the Boeing 777 has 14 spoilers each with its own actuator; two actuators each for the outboard ailerons, left & right elevators, and flaperons; and three actuators for the single rudder. 3 On the other hand, most civil UAVs have reliabilities that are orders of magnitude below 10 −9. For instance, the UAV Research Group at the University of Minnesota (UMN) 4 operates an Ultra Stick 120 aircraft (described further in section II.B) with single-string, off-...

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“…A baseline flight control system, including algorithms for attitude and navigation state estimation, has been developed to enable autonomous flight. 14 The simulation environment includes a model of the nonlinear aircraft dynamics, a software-in-the-loop (SIL) simulation, and a hardwarein-the-loop (HIL) simulation. The real-time software suite, simulation environment, and baseline flight control system are version controlled, documented, and available in the open source.…”

Section: A Flight Test Platformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validating Uncertain Aircraft Simulation Models Using Flight Test Data

Dorobantu

Seiler²,

Balas

2013

AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics (AFM) Conference

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Reliability validation of safety-critical flight control systems requires accurate simulation models of aircraft. This paper proposes a simple approach to validate such models efficiently using flight data. A statistical model validation analysis is shown to be equivalent to a robust control analysis for simple linear systems. The analysis is extended to nonlinear systems in conjunction with Monte Carlo simulations to validate an uncertain aircraft simulation model. This approach is demonstrated using the University of Minnesota Unmanned Aerial Vehicle flight test platform.

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An airborne experimental test platform: From theory to flight

Cited by 30 publications

References 19 publications

Quantifying Loss-of-Control Envelopes via Robust Tracking Analysis

Quantifying Loss-of-Control Envelopes via Robust Tracking Analysis

Safe Flight Using One Aerodynamic Control Surface

Validating Uncertain Aircraft Simulation Models Using Flight Test Data

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