New Generation of Rapid Flight Test Prototyping System for small Unmanned Air Vehicles

AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference and Exhibit

et al. 2007

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This paper develops a complete framework for coordinated control of multiple unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) that are tasked to execute collision-free maneuvers under strict spatial and temporal constraints in restricted airspace. The framework proposed includes strategies for deconflicted real-time path generation, nonlinear path following, and multiple vehicle coordination. Path following relies on the augmentation of existing autopilots with L1 adaptive output feedback control laws to obtain inner-outer loop control structures with guaranteed performance. Multiple vehicle coordination is achieved by enforcing temporal constraints on the speed profiles of the vehicles along their paths in response to information exchanged over a communication network. Again, L1 adaptive control is used to yield an inner-outer loop structure for vehicle coordination.A rigorous proof of stability and performance bounds of the combined path following and coordination strategies is given. Flight test results obtained at Camp Roberts, CA in 2007 demonstrate the benefits of using L1 adaptive control for path following of a single vehicle. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations for two vehicles are discussed and provide a proof of concept for time-critical coordination of multiple vehicles over communication networks with fixed topologies.

Section: Iiid Path-following With L 1 Adaptive Augmentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordinated Path Following for Time-Critical Missions of Multiple UAVs via L1 Adaptive Output Feedback Controllers

Kaminer

Yakimenko

AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference and Exhibit

et al. 2007

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“…The Piccolo Plus autopilot 10 is the core element of the current Rapid Flight Test Prototyping System (RFTPS) 12,21 developed at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). The principal idea of this system consists in integrating the flight control and prototyping computational platform onboard the airplane with the autopilot.…”

Section: Hil Simulator Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This allows, for instance, to still run a flight computer onboard as reported in Refs. 7,12,21 offering an added value of higher fidelity flight dynamics modeling to the previously reported flight architectures.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…12 reported on the Naval Postgraduate School's Rapid Flight Test Prototyping System which made extensive use of the HIL simulator available with the Piccolo autopilot for development of vision-based target tracking, 3D path following, SUAV control over the network and high-resolution imagery on the fly. 12 Nevertheless, all of these HIL simulators share the same limitation, namely a lack of a simple and intuitive way to modify the plant model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Simulink Based Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulator for Rapid Prototyping of UAV Control Algorithms

Lizarraga

AIAA Infotech@Aerospace Conference

Elkaim

et al. 2009

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. This paper describes a recently developed architecture for a Hardware-in-the-Loop simulator for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The principal idea is to use the advanced modeling capabilities of Simulink rather than hard-coded software as the flight dynamics simulating engine. By harnessing Simulink's ability to precisely model virtually any dynamical system or phenomena this newly developed simulator facilitates the development, validation and verification steps of flight control algorithms. Although the presented architecture is used in conjunction with a particular commercial autopilot, the same approach can be easily implemented on a flight platform with a different autopilot. The paper shows the implementation of the flight modeling simulation component in Simulink supported with an interfacing software to a commercial autopilot. This offers the academic community numerous advantages for hardware-in-the-loop simulation of flight dynamics and control tasks. The developed setup has been rigorously tested under a wide variety of conditions. Results from hardware-in-the-loop and real flight tests are presented and compared to validate its adequacy and assess its usefulness as a rapid prototyping tool.

“…The Piccolo Plus AP 28 is the core element of the current Rapid Flight Test Prototyping System (RFTPS) 29,30 developed at the NPS. This AP interacts with its own HIL simulator via a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus.…”

Section: Hardware In the Loop And Flight Test Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flight Validation of Metrics Driven L1 Adaptive Control

AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference and Exhibit

Kitsios

Kaminer

et al. 2008

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The paper addresses initial steps involved in the development and flight implementation of new metrics driven L1 adaptive flight control system. The work concentrates on (i) definition of appropriate control driven metrics that account for the control surface failures; (ii) tailoring recently developed L1 adaptive controller to the design of adaptive flight control systems that explicitly address these metrics in the presence of control surface failures and dynamic changes under adverse flight conditions; (iii) development of a flight control system for implementation of the resulting algorithms onboard of small UAV; and (iv) conducting a comprehensive flight test program that demonstrates performance of the developed adaptive control algorithms in the presence of failures. As the initial milestone the paper concentrates on the adaptive flight system setup and initial efforts addressing the ability of a commercial off-the-shelf autopilot with and without adaptive augmentation to recover from control surface failures.