Modeling and control of a quadrotor tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicles

Abstract

The tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicles have the advantages of multi-rotors and fixed-wing aircrafts, such as vertical takeoff and landing, long endurance and high-speed cruise. These make the tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicle capable for special tasks in complex environments. In this article, we present the modeling and the control system design for a quadrotor tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicle whose main structure consists of a traditional quadrotor with four wings fixed on the four rotor arms. The key point of the control system is the transition process between hover flight mode and level flight mode. However, the normal Euler angle representation cannot tackle both of the hover and level flight modes because of the singularity when pitch angle tends to [Formula: see text]. The dual-Euler method using two Euler-angle representations in two body-fixed coordinate frames is presented to couple with this problem, which gives continuous attitude representation throughout the whole flight envelope. The control system is divided into hover and level controllers to adapt to the two different flight modes. The nonlinear dynamic inverse method is employed to realize fuselage rotation and attitude stabilization. In guidance control, the vector field method is used in level flight guidance logic, and the quadrotor guidance method is used in hover flight mode. The framework of the whole system is established by MATLAB and Simulink, and the effectiveness of the guidance and control algorithms are verified by simulation. Finally, the flight test of the prototype shows the feasibility of the whole system.

Design of an Optimized Robust Deadbeat Controller for Roll Motion in Tail-Sitter VTOL UAVs

“…Moreover, Mhmood and Ali [4] designed an H-infinity model reference Proportion Integration Differentiation (PID) controller for the system at hand, where the black hole optimization method optimizes the controller to ensure that system output synchronously tracks the reference model output, and that any outputs in the associated control system are constrained. Subsequently, Xin et al [10] developed a control system for a quadrotor tail-sitter UAV, with an emphasis on transitioning between hover and level flight phases. The control system employed a dual-Euler approach, which combines Euler-angle expressions in two body-fixed coordinate sets to offer a continuous attitude description over the flying range.…”

“…The control system employed a dual-Euler approach, which combines Euler-angle expressions in two body-fixed coordinate sets to offer a continuous attitude description over the flying range. Also, the system was separated into hovering and levelling controllers, with flight level directing using the vector field approach and hover flying using quadrotors [10]. Additionally, Tal and Karaman [11] designed a control rule to control the limber paths of the UAV.…”

Aerodynamic structural design and control for a new miniature coaxial dual-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle

“…1–3 Compared with helicopters, multi-rotor aircraft has the characteristics of simple operation, convenient maintenance, and strong maneuverability. 4–6 However, multi-rotor technology is difficult to breakthrough in terms of energy efficiency ratio and endurance. Therefore, coaxial UAVs are designed to overcome the above-mentioned disadvantages of unmanned helicopters and multi-rotor UAVs.…”

Robust control and recursive modelling approach for hexarotor manipulator

“…The same system with another architecture is presented by Nguyen et al 11 The dynamic system model is essential for the motion simulation, the structure analysis, and the design of the control laws. 12 Despite the advances achieved in the dynamic modelling of aerial manipulation systems, their coupled dynamics modelling remains challenging. Researchers often use two techniques, the recursive Newton-Euler or Euler-Lagrange, to derive the motion equations.…”