GOCE Spacecraft Attitude Control: A magnetic attitude controller simulator

Given the difficulty that is normally associated with tuning highly nonlinear control systems, such as seen in LEO spacecraft, it is interesting to evaluate how new controller types perform. The measured data from the GOCE mission has led to the creation of high fidelity torque models describing the angular perturbations acting on a spacecraft....

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

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...

Adaptive control with Multivariate B-Splines and INDI: A case study for Vertical take-off and landing drones

In recent years the popularity of VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) drones has increased significantly. Due to their hybrid design, these drones can take off and land vertically and fly horizontally, enabling them to land in difficult terrain and have a more extensive range than the Quadcopter counterpart. However, this hybrid design also...

Challenges and solutions for sensor-based incremental nonlinear control of hydraulically actuated parallel robots

Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion has shown increases in performance and robustness to model mismatches and uncertainties in hydraulic control as compared to other model-based controllers. This work will expand on hydraulic Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion force control and discuss three of its challenges and accompanying solutions....

Guidance, Navigation and Control System Design of Envisat Active Debris Removal

Space debris is becoming one of the major risks to be suffered by operating and future space missions. Recent studies show that the number of potentially hazardous uncontrolled orbital bodies is growing with time, increasing the probability of impact with operational satellites. To counteract this problem, several studies are being suggested to...

Extended Incremental Non-linear Control Allocation on the TU Delft Quadplane

This research presents an implementation of a novel controller design on an overactuated hybrid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). This platform is a hybrid between a conventional quadcopter and a fixed-wing aircraft. Its inner loop is controlled by an existing but modified control method called Incremental Non-linear Control Allocation or INCA....

Fault Tolerant Control of Multirotor UAV for Piloted Outdoor Flight

The thesis aims to develop a Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) architecture, for the case of a damaged actuator for a multirotor that can be applied across multirotor platforms based on their Attainable Virtual Control Set (AVCS). The research is aimed to study the AVCS and identify the parameters that limit the controllability of multirotor UAV post...

Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion Control of Pneumatic Actuators

Pneumatic cylinders provide an environment-friendly actuation means by minimizing the leakage of any harmful industrial fluids, as occurs for hydraulic actuators. Thus, pneumatic actuators require less maintenance, compared to hydraulic actuators. Moreover, for a similar weight of hydraulic actuator, the cost of a pneumatic actuation system is...

Flight Control Design Using Hybrid Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion

Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) is a sensor-based control strategy, which has shown robustness against model uncertainties on various aerospace vehicles. The sensor-based nature of the method brings attractive properties which has made it popular in the last decade. INDI globally linearizes the system by making use of control...

Improving the Performance of INDI Flight Control for a Quadrotor in the Ceiling Effect

As the application areas of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) keep expanding, new flight areas are encountered more often. Small UAVs, named Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), even fly in areas like sewage pipes. These areas introduce new difficulties such as aerodynamic effects caused by the ground and/or ceiling. In this paper two main contributions are...

Nonlinear Fault Tolerant Flight Control of a Quadrotor Vehicle subjected to Complete Loss of Two Rotors

Conventional controllers are incapable of controlling a rotor failed quadrotor in high speed flight. In this paper, a fault tolerant controller based on Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion is proposed to control a quadrotor subjected to the loss of two rotors. A pseudoinverse is used to control the roll and pitch rate to steer the average...