Tracking control of a small unmanned air vehicle with airflow awareness

Abstract

Flying animals are so well adapted to their complex natural environment, that their aerial locomotive flight mechanisms attract much attention in the context of designing high performance flying robots. Inspired from the sensing and flight control strategies of birds and bats, a bioinspired robust tracking control method for small unmanned air vehicles using in-situ measured airflow information, is proposed. First, the relationship between the airflow measurment and aerodynamic forces is presented. Then, an aerodynamic model is derived, with the aerodynamic forces calculated from the flow measurment. To cope with the un-modeled dynamics, wind gust disturbances, and measurement noise, a robust sliding mode tracking controller is derived using the backstepping framework. Finally, a simulation system is created to test the effectiveness of the proposed tracking control method. The results demonstrate that the proposed tracking control system provides an enhanced tracking performance.