Tracking control with adaption of kites

Baayen, Jorn; Ockels, Wubbo

doi:10.1049/iet-cta.2011.0037

Cited by 71 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…For example, [5] observed that a simple control scheme should aspire to control the kite's direction of motion, referred to as the velocity angle. Lining the velocity angle to the concept of geodesic curvature elegantly simplifies the problem of tracking on a sphere.…”

Section: Control During Crosswind Flightmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crosswind kite control – A benchmark problem for advanced control and dynamic optimization

Costello

François

Bonvin

2017

European Journal of Control

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This article presents a kite control and optimization problem intended as a benchmark problem for advanced control and optimization. We provide an entry point to this exciting renewable energy system for researchers in control and optimization methods looking for a realistic test bench, and/or a useful application case for their theory. The benchmark problem in this paper can be studied in simulation, and a complete Simulink model is provided to facilitate this. The simulated scenario, which reproduces many of the challenges presented by a real system, is based on experimental studies from the literature, industrial data and the first author's own experience in experimental kite control. In particular, an experimentally validated wind turbulence model is included, which subjects the kite to realistic disturbances. The benchmark problem is that of controlling a kite such that the average line tension is maximized. Two different models are provided: A more comprehensive one is used to simulate the 'plant', while a simpler 'model' is used to design and implement control and optimization strategies. This way, uncertainty is present in the form of plant-model mismatch. The outputs of the plant are corrupted by measurement noise. The maximum achievable average line tension for the plant is calculated, which should facilitate the performance comparison of different algorithms. A simple control strategy is implemented on the plant and found to be quite sub-optimal, even if the free parameters of the algorithm are well tuned. An open question is whether or not more advanced control algorithms could do better. * Dr. Costello (sean.c.costello@gmail.com)

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Section: Control During Crosswind Flightmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crosswind kite control – A benchmark problem for advanced control and dynamic optimization

Costello

François

Bonvin

2017

European Journal of Control

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“…Small-scale prototypes (10-50 kW of rated power) of the mentioned concepts have been realized and successfully tested to demonstrate their power generation functionalities. Moreover, scientific contributions concerned with technical aspects like aerodynamics [10,11,9,16,25], controls [24,12,6,14,21,17,22,34,13,35], resource assessment [5,4], economics [20,36], prototype design [18], and power conversion [30], have recently appeared, gradually improving and expanding our understanding of such systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the autonomous take-off and landing of tethered wings for airborne wind energy

Van

Fagiano

Schnez

2016

2016 American Control Conference (ACC)

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The problem of autonomous launch and landing of a tethered rigid aircraft for airborne wind energy generation is addressed. The system operates with ground-based power conversion and pumping cycles, where the tether is repeatedly reeled in and out of a winch installed on the ground and linked to an electric motor/generator. In order to accelerate the aircraft to take-off speed, the ground station is augmented with a linear motion system composed by a slide translating on rails and controlled by a second motor. An onboard propeller is used to sustain the forward velocity during the ascend of the aircraft. During landing, a slight tension on the line is kept, while the onboard control surfaces are used to align the aircraft with the rails and to land again on them. A model-based, decentralized control approach is proposed, capable to carry out a full cycle of launch, low-tension flight, and landing again on the rails. The derived controller is tested via numerical simulations with a realistic dynamical model of the system, in presence of different wind speeds and turbulence, and its performance in terms of landing accuracy is assessed. This study is part of a project aimed to experimentally verify the launch and landing approach on a small-scale prototype.

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“…[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10], as well as [11] for an overview. Airborne wind energy systems aim at harnessing the wind blowing up to 1000 m above the ground, using tethered wings flying fast in crosswind conditions, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, it is not easy to carry out research activities in this field, due to at least two interrelated aspects. First, theoretical and numerical studies have now reached a quite mature stage [7,8,9,10,15,16], so that new results appear to be difficult to obtain without experimental tests. Second, it is not trivial to carry out experimental tests with an airborne wind energy system, due to the difficulty to obtain a prototype to be used for testing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of a Small-Scale Prototype for Research in Airborne Wind Energy

Fagiano

Marks

2015

IEEE/ASME Trans. Mechatron.

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Airborne wind energy is a new renewable technology that promises to deliver electricity at low costs and in large quantities. Despite the steadily growing interest in this field, very limited results with real-world data have been reported so far, due to the difficulty faced by researchers when realizing an experimental setup. Indeed airborne wind energy prototypes are mechatronic devices involving many multidisciplinary aspects, for which there are currently no established design guidelines. With the aim of making research in airborne wind energy accessible to a larger number of researchers, this work provides such guidelines for a small-scale prototype. The considered system has no energy generation capabilities, but it can be realized at low costs, used with little restrictions and it allows one to test many aspects of the technology, from sensors to actuators to wing design and materials. In addition to the guidelines, the paper provides the details of the design and costs of an experimental setup realized at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and successfully used to develop and test sensor fusion and automatic control solutions.

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Tracking control with adaption of kites

Cited by 71 publications

References 13 publications

Crosswind kite control – A benchmark problem for advanced control and dynamic optimization

Crosswind kite control – A benchmark problem for advanced control and dynamic optimization

On the autonomous take-off and landing of tethered wings for airborne wind energy

Design of a Small-Scale Prototype for Research in Airborne Wind Energy

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