Nonlinear Adaptive Control of Long-EZ Fixed-Wing Aircraft

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been extensively employed for various critical military and civilian**applications in the last decade, such as surveillance, border patrol, search and rescue, remote sensing and**geographic sampling, forest fire detection and fighting, power-/pipe-line inspection. To make UAVs safer and**more suitable for an increasing number of potential applications, the reliability and survivability of UAVs are**becoming the paramount concern. Compared to manned aerial vehicles, control of UAVs is more challenging -**all flight control, navigation and guidance operations must be robustly carried out by an onboard computer.**Presently, the design and tuning of control modules are done by trial-and-error on actual prototype vehicles.**This approach is time-consuming and costly. In some cases, the tests do not cover the entire flight experience;**thus, the final product may fail to perform satisfactorily during unseen real-world experiences. The**International Test Pilots School (ITPS) Canada has recently started to develop a time-domain simulation model**of the Long-EZ fixed-wing aircraft that closely resemble actual flight conditions. The autopilot system is then**required to be tuned and verified on the simulation model before it is deployed on the real system. This**approach, if implemented well, will greatly reduce the need for extensive tuning and validation using**experiments only and significantly increase the safety and reliability of both manned aircraft and UAVs. The**outcome of this project will significantly help the company improve their product marketability worldwide and**strengthen their cooperation with potential customers. In this case, this project will strengthen the relevant**Canadian companies' competitiveness and help to broaden their international market. Any increased sale of**their products is considered as an increase in Canadian exports. Through this project collaboration and future**long-term collaborations, significant contributions to Canada can be achieved.