Precision Deep-Stall Landing of Fixed-Wing UAVs Using Nonlinear Model Predictive Control
- PDF / 1,383,263 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 595.224 x 790.955 pts Page_size
- 62 Downloads / 155 Views
Precision Deep-Stall Landing of Fixed-Wing UAVs Using Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Siri Mathisen1,2
· Kristoffer Gryte1 · Sebastien Gros1 · Tor Arne Johansen1
Received: 29 October 2019 / Accepted: 2 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract To be able to recover a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on a small space like a boat deck or a glade in the forest, a steep and precise descent is needed. One way to reduce the speed of the UAV during landing is by performing a deep-stall landing manoeuvre, where the lift of the UAV is decreased until it is unable to keep the UAV level, at the same time as the drag is increased to minimize the speed of the UAV. However, this manoeuvre is highly nonlinear and non-trivial to perform with high precision. To solve this, an on-line nonlinear model predictive controller (NMPC) is implemented to guide the UAV in the landing phase, receiving inputs from the autopilot and guiding the UAV using pitch and throttle references. The UAV is guided along a custom path to a predefined deep-stall landing start point and performs a guided deep-stall. The simulation results show that the NMPC guides the UAV in a deep-stall landing with good precision and low speed, and that the results depend on a correct prediction model for the controller. Keywords Unmanned aerial vehicles · Real-time nonlinear model predictive control · Deep-stall landing · Autonomous landing · Guidance
1 Introduction During the recent years, autonomous flight has received a lot of attention in research (e.g. [1–3]) and the main challenges that arise are autonomous take-off, navigation and landing. This paper focuses on autonomous landing of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as this subgroup of UAVs generally has longer range and endurance, which makes them preferable in many operations compared to rotarywing UAVs. Autonomous landing of UAVs has been studied
This work is part of a project partly funded by the Research Council of Norway through the Centers of Excellence funding scheme, project number 223254. Centre for Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems (AMOS), Department of Engineering Cybernetics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway Siri Mathisen
[email protected] 1
Centre for Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems (NTNU AMOS), Department of Engineering Cybernetics, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
2
SINTEF Energy Research, Trondheim, Norway
before, see e.g. [4–6] and, more recently [7] and [8]. However, to further increase the usage of fixed-wing UAVs, autonomous landing without a runway is desired. This is motivated by maritime operations, where a UAV should be able to land on a ship deck, which normally has limited space. One solution to this problem is to land the UAV in a net (e.g. [9–11]) though, while it simplifies the recovery and enable landing on a ship, it yields significant structural loads on the UAV and net, and requires infrastructure to support the net. A decelerated landing of a
Data Loading...
