Experimental design of a mono-ducted-fan VTOL aircraft

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are very important when it comes to performing a desired task in a dangerous and/or unaccessible environment. Being able to design a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) UAV which is highly maneuverable and extremely stable is an important contribution to the field of aerial robotics since potential civil and military applications are tremendous (e.g., high buildings and monuments investigation, rescue missions, surveillance, etc). In practical applications, the position in space of the UAV is generally controlled by an operator through a remote control system using a visual feedback from an on-board camera, while the attitude is automatically stabilized via an on-board controller. The attitude controller is an important feature since it allows the vehicle to maintain a desired orientation and hence prevents the vehicle from flipping over and crashing when the pilot performs the desired maneuvers. The principal objectives of this project are: 1) Design a small-size mono-ducted-fan VTOL aircraft using lightweight composite materials. 2) Develop a DSP-based embedded control system for real-time implementation of the attitude estimation and control algorithms recently developed by the applicant.