Autonomous Formation Flight: Design and Experiments

Gu, Yu; Campa, Giampiero; Seanor, Brad; Gururajan, Srikanth; Napolitano, Marcello R.

doi:10.5772/6475

Cited by 25 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Formation flight was previously demonstrated with the WVU YF-22 subscale aircraft [41], where the magnitude of the mean distance error was found to be 13.52 m for a circular flight pattern. The Phastball performed substantially better than the YF-22 during the formation flight.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, steady wings level or coordinated turn conditions are assumed for both the leader and follower aircraft. Detailed design for the outer-loop controller was presented in [41] and the developed nonlinear control laws for the horizontal tracking problem are…”

Section: Formation Flight Controller Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Where the Phastball substitutes acceleration for linearized flight dynamics [41], the NEO quadrotor substitutes the total thrust of the four rotors. Using the small angle assumption we can linearize (14) into…”

Section: Quadrotor Controller Design Neo Quadrotors Fly In Amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The control laws are designed using a similar method done with the YF-22 [41] and previous Phastball [43] aircraft flight test studies. This paper expands the analysis of the Phastball flight test analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Autonomous Close Formation Flight Control with Fixed Wing and Quadrotor Test Beds

Rice

Huo

et al. 2016

International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

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Autonomous formation flight is a key approach for reducing energy cost and managing traffic in future high density airspace. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has allowed low-budget and low-risk validation of autonomous formation flight concepts. This paper discusses the implementation and flight testing of nonlinear dynamic inversion (NLDI) controllers for close formation flight (CFF) using two distinct UAV platforms: a set of fixed wing aircraft named "Phastball" and a set of quadrotors named "NEO." Experimental results show that autonomous CFF with approximately 5-wingspan separation is achievable with a pair of low-cost unmanned Phastball research aircraft. Simulations of the quadrotor flight also validate the design of the NLDI controller for the NEO quadrotors.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Formation Flight Controller Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Quadrotor Controller Design Neo Quadrotors Fly In Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Autonomous Close Formation Flight Control with Fixed Wing and Quadrotor Test Beds

Rice

Huo

et al. 2016

International Journal of Aerospace Engineering

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“…Also during the flight season, formation flight experiments with two aircraft were carried out [38]. A red "Phastball" aircraft was designated as the leader and was controlled manually by a human pilot and a follower green aircraft was under fully autonomous control.…”

Section: "Phastball" Pilot Command Analysis and Pilot Model Parametermentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Pilot-Induced-Oscillation and Pilot Vehicle System Stability Using UAS Flight Experiments

Mandal

2016

Aerospace

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This paper reports the results of a Pilot-Induced Oscillation (PIO) and human pilot control characterization study performed using flight data collected with a Remotely Controlled (R/C) unmanned research aircraft. The study was carried out on the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. Several existing Category 1 and Category 2 PIO criteria developed for manned aircraft are first surveyed and their effectiveness for predicting the PIO susceptibility for the R/C unmanned aircraft is evaluated using several flight experiments. It was found that the Bandwidth/Pitch rate overshoot and open loop onset point (OLOP) criteria prediction results matched flight test observations. However, other criteria failed to provide accurate prediction results. To further characterize the human pilot control behavior during these experiments, a quasi-linear pilot model is used. The parameters of the pilot model estimated using data obtained from flight tests are then used to obtain information about the stability of the Pilot Vehicle System (PVS) for Category 1 PIOs occurred during straight and level flights. The batch estimation technique used to estimate the parameters of the quasi-linear pilot model failed to completely capture the compatibility nature of the human pilot. The estimation results however provided valuable insights into the frequency characteristics of the human pilot commands. Additionally, stability analysis of the Category 2 PIOs for elevator actuator rate limiting is carried out using simulations and the results are compared with actual flight results.

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