MINES ParisTech CAS - Centre automatique et systèmes

DESIGN OF A CONTROLLED DUCTED-FAN MINIATURE AERIAL VEHICLE: FROM UAV TO FLYING ROBOTS

26 mai 2008, Salle R05, au Centre Automatique et Systèmes, Fontainebleau
14h00 : Lorenzo MARCONI, D.E.I.S. Università di Bologna.
In this talk the modelling, control design and prototyping of a Ducted-Fan Miniature Aerial Vehicle is presented. The proposed aerial configuration is constituted by two main parts the first one consists of a single fixed-pitch propeller which generates the main thrust, while the second one consists of a set of actuated aerodynamic surfaces whose effect, in conjunction with the main rotor downwash, is to provide the force and torque components needed to acquire full controllability of the attitude dynamics.
In the first part of the talk, after a description of the system's dynamics, a nonlinear controller capable to robustly stabilize the system over an arbitrary desired trajectory fulfilling functional controllability constraints in presence of parametric uncertainties is presented. The control law relies upon the use of nested saturation functions and a mix of high-gain and low-gain arguments to conclude the desired asymptotic properties. Then an experimental set-up which has been designed in order to pursuit simple high level tasks like surveillance, video capture, etc. is presented. Preliminary flight tests are also shown.
In the last part of the talk current research directions on this system are briefly discussed. In particular a few control problems arising when the UAV interacts with the environment are presented. These problems are motivated by the distinguishing feature of the proposed UAV to interact safely with the environment and to accomplish tasks such as manipulation of remote objects in air. In this framework we start studying the problem of safe take-off from hostile terrains and the control of the vehicle in contact with vertical fixed surfaces.