Synthetic Air Data System for Pitot Tube Failure Detection on the Variable Skew Quad Plane
F. Larocque (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
Ewoud Smeur – Mentor (TU Delft - Control & Simulation)
B. D. W. Remes – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Control & Simulation)
Tomaso Maria Luigi De Ponti – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Control & Simulation)
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Abstract
Pitot tube-free airspeed estimation methods exist for fixed-wing and multirotor configurations, but lack direct applicability to hybrid unmanned air vehicles due to their wide flight envelope and changing dynamics during transition. This work proposes a novel synthetic air data system for the Variable Skew Quad Plane (VSQP) hybrid vehicle to allow airspeed estimation from hover to high speed forward flight and provide pitot tube fault detection. An Extended Kalman Filter fuses Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and inertial measurements using model-independent kinematics equations to estimate wind and airspeed without the use of the pitot tube. The filter is augmented by a simplified vehicle force model. Pitot tube fault detection is achieved with a simple thresholding operation on the pitot tube measurement and the airspeed estimation residual. Accurate airspeed estimation was validated with logged test flight data, achieving an overall 1.62 m/s root mean square error. Using the airspeed estimation, quick detection (0.16 s) of a real-life abrupt pitot tube fault was demonstrated. This new airspeed estimation method provides an innovative approach for increasing the fault tolerance of the VSQP and similar quad-plane vehicles.