Integrated Control System for Aerosonde

Abstract

In this paper we present an integrated control system for Aerosonde, a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is laterally unstable. The integrated control system is based nonlinear energy-based control, which was successfully designed for a twin engine civil aircraft [1].

In principle, nonlinear energy-based control consists of two stages, the energy shaping stage and the damping injection stage. In the energy shaping stage, energy-like function of the system to be controlled is constructed and shaped to achieve the desired control objective(s). The system is injected with damping to ensure passivity. With this technique, the nonlinearity in the system dynamics, instead of eliminated, can be utilised to provide better control.

In this paper, we illustrate the control technique on landing autopilot of the Aerosonde.