Dynamics and Control of High-Performance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems

在过去的十年里，无人机(UAV)已经从纯粹的军事应用过渡到公众意识。它们现在被提议用于广泛的民用应用，包括监测农田；勘测基础设施(输电线、管道)；监测森林火灾；野生动物管理；警察监测；交通事故分析；等等。此时，常规无人机，包括固定翼飞机和常规飞行中的四旋翼飞机的动力学和控制都很清楚。然而，研究界正在提出和研究新的无人机系统和更极端的飞行。这些飞机包括混合动力飞机；集固定翼和旋转翼能力于一身的后座垂直起降飞机；四旋翼飞机团队，协作提升共同有效载荷；以及能够进行极端飞行的固定翼飞机。小型轻型遥控飞机令人印象深刻的飞行能力在业余爱好者中是显而易见的。这些功能的自动化需要更好地了解相关的动力学和空气动力学，这才能使先进的控制器开发成为可能。 该提案涉及对高性能无人机系统的动力学和控制的研究。我们过去在这一领域的工作侧重于彻底了解本研究中将使用的子系统，即固定翼飞机和四旋翼飞机的建模、动力学和控制、推进器(发动机/螺旋桨)动力学和缆索动力学。我们将继续提高对这些子系统的了解，并将它们结合在一起，创建更复杂的系统，并扩大飞行包络。我们计划研究以下主题：(A)固定翼飞行穿过密集障碍区的控制和运动规划；(B)尾翼飞行器和混合无人机的动力学和控制；以及(C)处理公共系留有效载荷的多个四旋翼飞行器的耦合动力学和控制器设计。 总而言之，这些领域的进展将扩大无人机系统可以承担的任务范围。这些高性能平台和系统的开发将提高它们的易操作性和自主性，使它们能够在更广泛的应用中使用，包括在杂乱环境中飞行。研究结果将对旨在设计具有更高能力和自主性的飞机的无人机系统的研究界和设计者产生广泛影响。HQP在这一领域的培训也很重要：最近，我们的毕业生在无人机初创企业找到了工作，由于对这一领域的浓厚兴趣，这些初创企业正在蓬勃发展。

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.