Autonomous Large Parafoil Guidance, Navigation, and Control System Design Status

Carter, David W.; George, Sean; Hattis, Philip D.; McConley, Marc W.; Rasmussen, Scott A.; Singh, Leena; Tavan, Steve

doi:10.2514/6.2007-2514

Cited by 48 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In this work, we adopt the 10,000-pound Dragony parafoil used by Carter et al [17], with v 0 = 17.8 m/s and lift-to-drag ratio…”

Section: A Parafoil Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The heading rate of the parafoil is modeled as a second-order approximation of the canopy Dutch roll lateral mode; our specic model selects time constant τ = 11.5 s and damping ratio ζ = 0.5 as suggested by Carter et al [17]. A rst-order lag is used to model the dierential toggle control input mechanism with τ = 5 s [18], while the controller is a PID with feedforward gains tuned to achieve comparable performance [17].…”

Section: A Parafoil Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Wind Uncertainty Modeling and Robust Trajectory Planning for Autonomous Parafoils

Luders

Ellertson

How

et al. 2016

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

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A key challenge facing modern airborne delivery systems, such as parafoils, is the ability to accurately and consistently deliver supplies into dicult, complex terrain. Robustness is a primary concern, given that environmental wind disturbances are often highly uncertain and time-varying. This paper presents a new on-line trajectory planning algorithm that enables a large, autonomous parafoil with under-actuated dynamics to robustly execute collision avoidance and precision landing on mapped terrain, even with signicant wind uncertainties. This algorithm is designed to handle arbitrary initial altitudes, approach geometries, and terrain surfaces, and is robust to wind disturbances that may be highly dynamic throughout terminal approach. Real-time wind modeling and classication is used to anticipate future disturbances, while a novel uncertainty-sampling technique ensures that robustness to future variation is eciently maintained. The designed cost-to-go function enables selection of partial paths which intelligently trade o between current and reachable future states, while encouraging upwind landings. Simulation results demonstrate that this algorithm reduces the worst-case impact of wind disturbances relative to state-of-the-art approaches.

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“…In this work, we adopt the 10,000-pound Dragony parafoil used by Carter et al [17], with v 0 = 17.8 m/s and lift-to-drag ratio…”

Section: A Parafoil Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Parafoil Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wind Uncertainty Modeling and Robust Trajectory Planning for Autonomous Parafoils

Luders

Ellertson

How

et al. 2016

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The approximate forms used for the AM forces and moments are given in Eqs. (13)(14)(15). Parametric approximations given by Lissaman and Brown are used to determine the AM and inertia coefficients in Eq.…”

Section: Parafoil and Payload Dynamic Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast to these specialized platforms, fielded airdrop systems have only a single GPS receiver [12][13][14]. This is desirable to reduce cost and complexity, especially because the GPS receiver does not require any preflight calibration.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Specialized System Identification for Parafoil and Payload Systems

Ward

Costello

Slegers

2012

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

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There are a number of peculiar aspects to parafoil and payload systems that make it difficult to apply conventional system identification procedures used for aerospace systems. Parafoil and payload systems are unique because typically there is very little sensor information available, the sensors that are available are separated from the canopy by a complex network of flexible rigging, the systems are very sensitive to wind and turbulence, the systems exhibit a number of nonlinear behaviors, and the systems exhibit a high degree of variability from flight to flight. The current work describes a robust system identification procedure developed to address the specific difficulties posed by airdrop systems. By employing a two-phase approach that separately considers atmospheric winds estimation and aerodynamic coefficient estimation, a nonlinear, 6-degree-of-freedom dynamic simulation model is generated using only Global Positioning System data from the flight test. The key to this approach is the use of a simplified aerodynamic representation of the canopy, which requires identification of only the steady-state response to control input to completely define the dynamic model. The proposed procedure is demonstrated by creating a simulation model using Global Positioning System data from actual flight tests. To validate the procedure, the dynamic response of the simulation model is then compared to inertial measurement unit data that were not used in any way to develop the simulation model, with excellent results.

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Fixed‐time observer‐based heading control of a paraglider recovery system with input saturation

Guo,

Yan,

Xing

et al. 2024

Asian Journal of Control

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This paper investigates a challenging heading control problem for a flexible paraglider recovery system with input saturation. A fixed‐time observer‐based control approach is presented. In this approach, a fixed‐time disturbance observer is preliminarily designed to estimate the aerodynamic uncertainties and the complex coupling of the subsystems. A fixed‐time auxiliary system is then proposed to compensate for input saturation impact. With the application of the estimated and compensation values, a novel heading tracking controller is synthesized with compensated disturbance. The key feature of the scheme is that it is not only fixed time stable regardless of any initial state, but also it prevents control performance degradation due to input saturation and various disturbances. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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Autonomous Large Parafoil Guidance, Navigation, and Control System Design Status

Cited by 48 publications

References 6 publications

Wind Uncertainty Modeling and Robust Trajectory Planning for Autonomous Parafoils

Wind Uncertainty Modeling and Robust Trajectory Planning for Autonomous Parafoils

Specialized System Identification for Parafoil and Payload Systems

Fixed‐time observer‐based heading control of a paraglider recovery system with input saturation

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