Pitch Control of a Micro Air Vehicle with Micropressure Sensors

    Authors

    H. Shen; Y. J. Xu;C. Remeikas

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    J. Aircr.

    Keywords

    SLIDING MODE CONTROL; FLIGHT; VISION; Engineering, Aerospace

    Abstract

    Maintaining stable flight of micro aerial vehicles is challenging, especially in complex, low-Reynolds-number flight environments while considering wind gust disturbance, flow separation, and flow reattachment. To date, most micro aerial vehicles use vision, inertial measurement units, and/or global positioning systems as their primary sensing and navigation devices; however, actual flow conditions over the aircraft wing surfaces cannot be captured directly. In this paper, a biologically inspired micro aerial vehicle pitch control system is designed using distributed pressure information. The pressure information on the wing surfaces of a micro aerial vehicle is directly measured by a array of digital barometric micropressure sensors and is then used to calculate the aerodynamic forces, center of pressure, pitching moment, etc. Anew pitch motion model that can capture the pressure information is derived from the control perspective. A nonlinear controller is also designed to achieve accurate pitch control, which is robust with respect to bounded uncertainties and unmodeled dynamics. It is anticipated that this new micro aerial vehicle design, which uses real-time sensed pressure information, can significantly enhance the stability and agility of micro aerial vehicles.

    Journal Title

    Journal of Aircraft

    Volume

    50

    Issue/Number

    1

    Publication Date

    1-1-2013

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    239

    Last Page

    248

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000314667100023

    ISSN

    0021-8669

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