A software-in-the-loop implementation of adaptive formation control for fixed-wing UAVs

Journal Article (2019)
Author(s)

Jun Yang (China State Shipbuilding Corporation)

X. Wang (TU Delft - Team Bart De Schutter)

S Baldi (TU Delft - Team Bart De Schutter, Southeast University)

Satish Singh (Student TU Delft)

Stefano Fari (Institute of Space Systems, Politecnico di Milano)

Research Group
Team Bart De Schutter
Copyright
© 2019 Jun Yang, X. Wang, S. Baldi, Satish Singh, S. Fari
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1109/JAS.2019.1911702
More Info
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Publication Year
2019
Language
English
Copyright
© 2019 Jun Yang, X. Wang, S. Baldi, Satish Singh, S. Fari
Research Group
Team Bart De Schutter
Issue number
5
Volume number
6
Pages (from-to)
1230-1239
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Abstract

This paper discusses the design and software-in-the-loop implementation of adaptive formation controllers for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with parametric uncertainty in their structure, namely uncertain mass and inertia. In fact, when aiming at autonomous flight, such parameters cannot assumed to be known as they might vary during the mission (e.g. depending on the payload). Modelingg and autopilot design for such autonomous fixed-wing UAVs are presented. The modeling is implemented in Matlab, while the autopilot is based on ArduPilot, a popular open-source autopilot suite. Specifically, the ArduPilot functionalities are emulated in Matlab according to the Ardupilot documentation and code, which allows us to perform software-in-the-loop simulations of teams of UAVs embedded with actual autopilot protocols. An overview of realtime path planning, trajectory tracking and formation control resulting from the proposed platform is given. The software-in-the-loop simulations show the capability of achieving different UAV formations while handling uncertain mass and inertia.

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