ON SAFETY ASSESSEMENT OF NOVEL APPROACH TO ROBUST UAV FLIGHT CONTROL IN GUSTY ENVIRONMENTS

摘要

In a follow-up to our previous study [1], thecurrent work examines the gust-induced “coneof uncertainty” in a small unmanned aerialvehicle’s (UAV) flight trajectory addressed inthe context of safety assessments of UAVoperations. Such analysis is a critical facet ofthe integration of unmanned aerial systems(UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS),particularly in terminal airspace. The paperdescribes a predictive, robust feedback-loopflight control model that is applicable to variousclasses of UAVs and unsteady flight-pathscenarios. The control design presented in thispaper extends previous research results bydemonstrating asymptotic (zero steady-stateerror) altitude regulation control in thepresence of unmodeled vertical wind gustdisturbances. To address the practicalconsiderations involved in small UAVapplications with limited computationalresources, the proposed control method isdesigned with a computationally simplisticstructure, without the requirement of complexcalculations or function approximators in thecontrol loop. Proof of the theoretical result issummarized, and detailed numerical simulationresults are provided, which demonstrate thecapability of the proposed nonlinear controlmethod to asymptotically reject wind gustdisturbances and parameter variations in thestate space model. Simulation comparisons witha standard linear control method are providedfor completeness.