A Hovering Control Strategy For A Tail-Sitter VTOL UAV That Increases Stability Against Large Disturbance
A Hovering Control Strategy For A Tail-Sitter VTOL UAV That Increases Stability Against Large Disturbance
A Hovering Control Strategy For A Tail-Sitter VTOL UAV That Increases Stability Against Large Disturbance
Hovering
Abstract— The application range of UAVs (unmanned aerial
vehicles) is expanding along with performance upgrades. Ver-
tical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft has the merits of
both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. Tail-sitting is the
simplest way for the VTOL maneuver since it does not need Transition from Takeoff Transition to Landing
extra actuators. However, conventional hovering control for
a tail-sitter UAV is not robust enough against large distur-
bance such as a blast of wind, a bird strike, and so on. It
is experimentally observed that the conventional quaternion
feedback hovering control often fails to keep stability when the
control compensates large attitude errors. This paper proposes Fig. 1. Takeoff and landing of the tail-sitter VTOL aircraft.
a novel hovering control strategy for a tail-sitter VTOL UAV
that increases stability against large disturbance. In order to wingtip rotors which generate a rotational force countering
verify the proposed hovering control strategy, simulations and the motor torque to their MAV [7].
experiments on hovering of the UAV are performed giving large However, those tail-sitter UAVs have some complex equip-
attitude errors. The results show that the proposed control
strategy successfully compensates initial large attitude errors ments such as a coaxial contra-rotating propeller [1], a ducted
keeping stability, while the conventional quaternion feedback fan and fins [2], side-by-side rotors [4],[5], and wingtip rotors
controller fails. [7] for the tail-sitting VTOL maneuver.
Only few attempts have been made to develop tail-sitter
I. INTRODUCTION UAVs without any extra equipment so far. However, since
VTOL UAVs make missions possible which are normally these simple tail-sitter UAVs have no extra equipment for
impossible to accomplish using either fixed-wing or rotary- countering the motor torque, robust stationary hovering is
wing UAVs alone; for example, search and rescue operations more difficult than other robots with complex equipments.
covering a broad area located at the rooftop of a building. Large disturbances in hovering such as strong wind or bird
There are several ways to perform VTOL maneuvers such as impact are major problems to overcome.
tilting-rotor, tilting-wing, thrust-vectoring and tail-sitting etc. Frank et al. have succeeded in the indoor flight experiment
The simplest way is tail-sitting since it does not need extra using a commercially available R/C acrobatic airplane and
actuators for the VTOL maneuver. A simple mechanism is the motion capture system [8]. However, since the flight
preferable for UAVs, because weight saving is crucial for the experiments were performed in a room, there was no dis-
VTOL maneuver and has the advantage of cost saving. Tail- turbance such as strong wind which is a major problem to
sitter VTOL aircraft switches between level flight mode and overcome [8]. Knoebel et al. proposed a new airframe design
hover mode by changing the pitch attitude of the fuselage [9]. They are working on flight tests using a commercially
by 90 ° as shown in Fig. 1. available single propeller R/C model which represents the
US Air Force Research Lab and AeroVironment Inc. “XFY1”. However, hovering performance with large distur-
have developed “SkyTote” which is equipped with a coaxial bance were not reported in [9]. Johnson et al. have developed
contra-rotating propeller [1]. The Defense Advanced Re- “GTEdge” which is a large scale R/C airplane weighting
search Projects Agency (DARPA) and Aurora Flight Sciences about 15 kg and studied the tail-sitter maneuver [10],[11].
have developed “GoldenEye” which is equipped with a They have succeeded transition flight and hovering; however,
ducted fan. It uses fins outside the duct during level flight the robustness of hovering control was not discussed.
and fins in the duct during hovering [2]. Stone developed “T- This paper is intended to propose a novel control strategy
Wing” which has a canard wing and tandem rotors [3],[4]. for robust hovering when large attitude errors are generated
Kubo and Suzuki proposed a twin-fuselage plane [5]. Green by some disturbances. Simulations and experiments on hov-
and Oh developed a micro air vehicle [6], and added two ering control of the UAV are performed giving large attitude
Aileron Servo
R/C Receiver
Attitude Sensor
Module
Elevator Servo
Fig. 2. Tail-Sitter UAV.
Ultrasonic Sensor
errors to verify the robustness against the errors. The results Rudder Servo
show that the proposed strategy successfully compensates the Pressure Altitude Microcomputer
large errors, while the conventional control strategy failed to Sensor
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T mg XN XN XN
XC
θ θtwist
Propeller mg tanθ
≈ mgθ
Center of Gravity θtilt
YN
v
Downwash mg
(a) Step 1. Tilt (b) Step 2. Twist (c) Reference Attitude
(Current Attitude)
Control Surface
Fig. 6. Concept of the resolved tilt-twist angle control.
Fig. 5. Operating principle for hovering.
Step 1 Derive pitch and yaw errors based on an analogy
of inverted pendulum
by using q c and qr [13]: The first step derives the pitch and yaw errors.
Current attitude CO R and reference attitude O
qr0 qr1 qr2 qr3 N R of the
−qr1 qr0 qr3 −qr2 UAV are defined as follows:
qe = q , (2)
−qr2 −qr3 qr0 qr1 c O
CR ≡ [exC eyC ezC ], (4)
−qr3 qr2 −qr1 qr0
O
NR ≡ [exN eyN ezN ], (5)
where qr = [qr0 qr1 qr2 qr3 ]T . The vector part of q e
(qe1 , qe2 , qe3 ) calculated by (2) shows amount of error about where e jC and e jN ( j = x, y, z) are the unit vectors
each axis in the body coordinates. along j axis of the body coordinate frame with
Each three axes are controlled by a PID controller. The respect to the world coordinate frame at current
control command is sent to control surfaces corresponding attitude and reference attitude, respectively.
to each axis as follows: Considering the UAV as an inverted pendulum, its er-
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The hat operator transforms a vector v into a skew- C. Altitude Control
symmetric matrix as follows, The altitude controller is independently designed. The
desired propeller reference rotation speed is calculated from
0 −vz vy the reference and current altitudes. Altitude control is gener-
v̂ = vz 0 −vx . (12) ally possible without propeller rotation speed feedback, but
−vy vx 0 control performance is deteriorated by changes in battery
conditions and motor load due to disturbance. Therefore, a
The UAV attitude after compensating θ tilt (see the
feedback control of propeller rotation speed is introduced in
Fig. 6(b)), is given using R v as follows:
altitude control system to enhance robustness against these
changes. Control gains of the altitude control system were
RP = Rv CO R ≡ [exP eyP ezP ], (13) determined through simulation.
where e jP ( j = x, y, z) are the unit vectors along j IV. SIMULATION
axis of the body coordinate frame after compensating A. Mathematical Model
θtilt with respect to the world coordinate frame. The To evaluate the hovering algorithms, a two-dimensional
absolute roll error is defined as follows, tail-sitter UAV simulator was developed. The translational
mathematical model of the UAV in the aircraft body coordi-
−1 e zP · e zN nates is represented as follows,
θtwist = cos . (14)
|ezP ||ezN |
m U̇ + QW = L sin α − D cos α − mgsin θ + T − DP , (19)
Since aircraft roll angle range is −180 ° ∼ 180 °, the
m Ẇ − QU = −L cos α − D sin α + mg cos θ , (20)
sign of the roll error must be identified. In order to
identify the sign of the roll error θ X , θsign is defined where U and W are velocities along the X and Z axes in the
as follows: aircraft body coordinates, L and D are lift and drag forces,
α is the attack angle, θ is the pitch angle, m is the fuselage
−1 eyP · ezN mass, g is the gravitational acceleration, T is the thrust force,
θsign = cos . (15) DP is the propeller drag force, and Q is the angular velocity
|eyP ||ezN |
of the Y axis around the aircraft body coordinates.
Using θsign , the roll error θ X of the UAV is identified The rotational mathematical model of the UAV is repre-
as follows: sented as follows,
θtwist , for θsign ≤ π2 (16a) Ixx Ṗ + C p P = Ma + M p, (21)
θX = π Iyy Q̇ + Cq Q = Mt + Me , (22)
−θtwist . for θsign > 2 (16b)
where P and Q are angular velocities around the X and Y
Step 3 Projection of pitch and yaw errors onto the rolling axes of the aircraft body coordinates, I xx and Iyy are inertia
body coordinate frame around the X and Y axes of the aircraft body coordinates, C p
In order to simultaneously compensate pitch, yaw, and Cq are viscous resistance coefficients, Ma and M p are the
and roll errors, the pitch and yaw errors must be aileron and propeller rolling momentum around the X axis
projected onto the body coordinate frame which is of the aircraft body coordinates, M t and Me are fuselage
rolling with respect to the world coordinate frame. and elevator pitching momentums around the Y axis of the
Errors around each axis in the aircraft body coordi- aircraft body coordinates.
nates are given as follows: To identify aerodynamic forces (L, D, D p , Ma , M p , Mt , Me ),
experiments including wind tunnel test are performed with
d1 1 0 0 θX scale model of the UAV. Coefficients of main wing aerody-
d2 = 0 cos θX − sin θX θY . (17) namic forces (CL ,CD ,CMt ) are measured in all attack angle
d3 0 sin θX cos θX θZ range (−180 ° ∼ 180 °). Inherent parameters of the propeller
are measured through wind tunnel test. The momentum the-
Step 4 Feedback control for each control surface ory is used for its aerodynamic force calculation. Electrical
Control command is sent to control surfaces based and mechanical time constants of the DC motor are identified
on individual axes as follows: by experiment.
B. Simulation Results
δi = −(KP di + KI di dt + KD d˙i ), (18)
A typical hovering simulation result of quaternion feed-
back is shown in Fig. 7. The initial attitude is (α β γ ) =
where δ1 , δ2 and δ3 are the aileron angle, elevator (0 0 90) ° and the reference attitude is (α β γ ) = (170 0
angle and rudder angle, respectively. d 1 ∼ d3 are cal- 80) ° , where α , β , and γ are ZXY Euler angles. The error
culated by (17). PID gains are same as the quaternion angle around Z axis decreased rapidly. However, note that
PID feedback gains. the error angle around Y axis increased in the early stage
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150 150
120 120
90 90
60 60
30 30
0 0
−30 −30 Z result
−60 −60 Z reference
−90 Z result −90 Y result
Z reference Y reference
−120 −120
Y result X result
−150 −150 X reference
Y reference
−180 −180
0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4
Time [s] Time [s]
Fig. 8. Resolved tilt-twist angle control simulation. Fig. 13. Resolved tilt-twist angle control experiment.
8
Resolved tilt-twist angle feedback control
7 Quaternion feedback control V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
6
A. Hovering with Quaternion Feedback Control
5
Time [s]
4
Fig. 10 shows snapshots of one of the hovering experi-
ments with quaternion feedback control. In this experiment,
3
the reference and initial attitudes are about the same as
2
simulation. The result of the experiment is shown in Fig. 12.
1
In the beginning of experiment, the error angle around Y
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 axis increased and the UAV lost stability. This result is the
Yaw [°] same as the computer simulation. Moreover, the error angle
Fig. 9. Simulated recovery time comparison resolved tilt-twist angle control
with quaternion feedback control.
around Y axis increase and the error angle around Z axis
decrease caused the error angle around X axis. As a result,
the UAV couldn’t continue hovering.
of simulation. This error increase causes a long horizontal It is notable that quaternion feedback control works well
movement. when errors are not very large. However, in some cases
Fig. 8 is the result of simulation on a resolved tilt-twist as shown in Fig. 10, quaternion feedback control causes
angle control hovering. Same conditions are given in both problem.
simulations. The deceleration in error angle around Z axis is
slightly slower than quaternion feedback. Nevertheless, the B. Hovering with Resolved Tilt-Twist Angle Feedback Control
error angle around Y axis deceleration is very fast. As a Fig. 11 shows snapshots of one of the hovering experi-
result, with short horizontal movement, stable hovering is ments with resolved tilt-twist angle control. The experiment
realized. conditions are largely similar to the quaternion feedback
Fig. 9 shows a comparison of recovery times of both the expriment. The result of the experiment is shown in Fig. 13.
strategies. In quaternion feedback control, when the error The angles around Y and X kept reference values, respec-
angle around Z axis surpasses approx 70 °, the recovering tively. The error angle around Z axis decreases smoothly.
time increased exponentially. On the other hand, in resolved This arises from independent calculation steps for tilt and
tilt-twist angle control, the rate of increase of recovering twist angles in resolved tilt-twist angle control.
time is linear. Therefore, resolved tilt-twist angle control has Additionally, even when a human inflicted large distur-
superior stability against the large error angle around Z axis. bance during hovering the UAV continued stable flight and
Furthermore, the error angle around Y axis was converged errors were converged (Figs. 14 and 15). This robustness will
very quickly in resolved tilt-twist angle feedback in all be effective in order to overcome dynamic disturbance like
error angle ranges around Z axis. However, in quaternion a bird strike during hovering. These flights are experimented
feedback, the larger the error angle around Z axis exists, the indoors, but the strategies brought out same performance in
longer the error angle around Y axis converge time is needed. the open air.
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Fig. 10. Quaternion feedback control experiment. The UAV couldn’t continue hovering.
Fig. 11. Resolved tilt-twist angle control experiment. Since large aileron angle caused drag force, the UAV lost altitude slightly. However, the UAV could
continue hovering stably.
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This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Exploratory
Research (No. 21656219), and Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fel-
lows (21-6015).
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