Control System Development and Flight Testing of the Tiger Moth UAV

摘要

There is a need to provide high-resolution video imagery to the sensor operators of current and future gunships while supporting missions above an area of interest. Sensor operators need to see beyond the visual range of the main platform, peer through weather, and monitor multiple geo-separated or dispersing targets. The Lite Machines Tiger Moth UA V is designed to fill this need. The objective of the work presented herein was to improve the inner loop control laws of the Tiger Moth UA V through control system modeling, optimization and flight tests. Laboratory tests were conducted to identify aircraft sensor and servo dynamics. A bare-airframe hover/low-speed dynamics model was developed from piloted frequency sweeps. The identified components and dynamics model were combined with a Simulink~® representation of the control laws to form a validated analysis model which was used in CONDUIT~® to optimize the attitude loop feedback gains. Flight tests with the optimized gains showed improved performance. Finally, the improvements were demonstrated to the U. S. Air Force in untethered flight tests conducted at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, in December of 2011.