Attitude Control of a Tilt-rotor Tailsitter Micro Air Vehicle Using Incremental Control

Master thesis (2022)

Authors

G.H.L.H. Lovell-Prescod Aerospace Engineering

Contributors

E.J.J. Smeur (supervisor 1)
Z. Ma (supervisor 2)
Faculty
Aerospace Engineering
Copyright: © 2022 Gervase Lovell-Prescod
UAV Tailsitter Incremental control INDI Hybrid MAVs Actuator saturation Tilting rotors
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Published Date

22-11-2022

Language

English

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Faculty

Aerospace Engineering

Abstract

By combining the ability to hover with a wing for fast and efficient horizontal flight, hybrid unmanned aircraft extend the flight envelope and therefore mission capabilities of unmanned aircraft. However, this comes at a cost: increased complexity control-wise and being more susceptible to wind disturbances. This susceptibility to wind gusts is particularly problematic for tailsitters as during hovering and vertical flight their wing is perpendicular to horizontal wind disturbances, often leading to actuator saturation. This paper presents a novel tailsitter micro air vehicle with two leading edge tilting rotors serving as its only actuators. It is shown that thrust vectoring generates sufficient control moment generation alleviating actuator saturation. Incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) is implemented for attitude control and is demonstrated to compensate for unmodeled forces and moments whilst only relying on actuator control effectiveness and knowledge of actuator dynamics.