Dynamics and Control of High-Performance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems

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Over the past decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have transitioned from purely military applications into the public consciousness. They are now being proposed for a wide range of civilian applications, including monitoring of agricultural fields; surveying of infrastructure (power lines, pipelines); monitoring of forest fires; wildlife management; police surveillance; analysis of traffic accidents; and many more. At this time, the dynamics and control of conventional UAVs, including fixed-wing aircraft and quadrotors in conventional flight are well understood. However, new UAV systems and more extreme flight are being proposed and investigated in the research community. These include hybrid aircraft; tailsitter vertical takeoff/landing aircraft, which merge the capabilities of fixed-wing and rotary-wing; teams of quadrotors collaborating to lift a common payload; and fixed-wing aircraft capable of extreme flight. The impressive flight capabilities of small lightweight teleoperated aircraft are apparent from the hobbyist community. Automation of these capabilities requires a better understanding of the associated dynamics and aerodynamics, which can then enable advanced controller development.******This proposal addresses the study of the dynamics and control of high-performance UAV systems. Our past work in this area has focused on a thorough understanding of the subsystems that will be used in this study, namely the modeling, dynamics and control of fixed-wing aircraft and quadrotors, thruster (motor/propeller) dynamics, and cable dynamics. We will continue to improve our understanding of these subsystems and combine them to create more complex systems and enable a broadening of the flight envelope. We plan to study the following topics: (a) Control and motion planning of fixed-wing flight through dense obstacle fields; (b) Tailsittter and hybrid UAV dynamics and control; and (c) Coupled dynamics and controller design for multiple quadrotors handling a common tethered payload.******Taken together, advances in these areas will broaden the scope of tasks that can be undertaken by UAV systems. The development of these high-performance platforms and systems will improve their ease of operation and autonomy, allowing their use in a wider range of applications, including flight in cluttered environments. The research results will have a broad impact on the research community and designers of UAV systems aiming to design aircraft with improved capabilities and autonomy. The training of HQP in this area is also important: in the recent past, our graduates have found employment in UAV startups, which are blossoming due to intense interest in this area.