Reconfigurable inner-loop control laws improve the fault tolerance of a vehicle to control effector failures; however, in order to preserve stability, the unfailed effectors may be deployed to off-nominal positions to compensate for undesirable perturbations caused by the failed effectors. The effectors acting under the influence of a reconfigurable control law can produce significant perturbations to the nominal forces produced by the wing and body and can also affect the range of flight conditions over which the vehicle can be controlled. Three degree-of-freedom (3 DOF) dynamical models used in trajectory optimization for aerospace vehicles typically include wing-body aerodynamic force effects but ignore the aerodynamic forces produced by the control surfaces. In this work, a method for including these trim effects as well as control induced trajectory constraints in a 3 DOF model is presented.
With the extraordinary growth of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in research, military, and commercial contexts, there has been a need for a reference that provides a comprehensive look at the latest research in the area. Filling this void, Smart Autonomous Aircraft: Flight Control and Planning for UAV introduces the advanced methods of flight contr
This book includes original, peer-reviewed research papers from the ICAUS 2022, which offers a unique and interesting platform for scientists, engineers and practitioners throughout the world to present and share their most recent research and innovative ideas. The aim of the ICAUS 2022 is to stimulate researchers active in the areas pertinent to intelligent unmanned systems. The topics covered include but are not limited to Unmanned Aerial/Ground/Surface/Underwater Systems, Robotic, Autonomous Control/Navigation and Positioning/ Architecture, Energy and Task Planning and Effectiveness Evaluation Technologies, Artificial Intelligence Algorithm/Bionic Technology and Its Application in Unmanned Systems. The papers showcased here share the latest findings on Unmanned Systems, Robotics, Automation, Intelligent Systems, Control Systems, Integrated Networks, Modeling and Simulation. It makes the book a valuable asset for researchers, engineers, and university students alike.
This book provides an introduction to the emerging field of planning and decision making for aerial robots. An aerial robot is the ultimate form of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, an aircraft endowed with built-in intelligence, requiring no direct human control and able to perform a specific task. It must be able to fly within a partially structured environment, to react and adapt to changing environmental conditions and to accommodate for the uncertainty that exists in the physical world. An aerial robot can be termed as a physical agent that exists and flies in the real 3D world, can sense its environment and act on it to achieve specific goals. So throughout this book, an aerial robot will also be termed as an agent. Fundamental problems in aerial robotics include the tasks of spatial motion, spatial sensing and spatial reasoning. Reasoning in complex environments represents a difficult problem. The issues specific to spatial reasoning are planning and decision making. Planning deals with the trajectory algorithmic development based on the available information, while decision making determines priorities and evaluates potential environmental uncertainties. The issues specific to planning and decision making for aerial robots in their environment are examined in this book and categorized as follows: motion planning, deterministic decision making, decision making under uncertainty and finally multi-robot planning. A variety of techniques are presented in this book, and a number of relevant case studies are examined. The topics considered in this book are multidisciplinary in nature and lie at the intersection of Robotics, Control Theory, Operational Research and Artificial Intelligence.
An aerial robot is a system capable of sustained flight with no direct human control and able to perform a specific task. A lighter than air robot is an aerial robot that relies on the static lift to balance its own weight. It can also be defined as a lighter than air unmanned aerial vehicle or an unmanned airship with sufficient autonomy. Lighter than air systems are particularly appealing since the energy to keep them airborne is small. They are increasingly considered for various tasks such as monitoring, surveillance, advertising, freight carrier, transportation. This book familiarizes readers with a hierarchical decoupled planning and control strategy that has been proven efficient through research. It is made up of a hierarchy of modules with well defined functions operating at a variety of rates, linked together from top to bottom. The outer loop, closed periodically, consists of a discrete search that produces a set of waypoints leading to the goal while avoiding obstacles and weighed regions. The second level smoothes this set so that the generated paths are feasible given the vehicle's velocity and accelerations limits. The third level generates flyable, timed trajectories and the last one is the tracking controller that attempts to minimize the error between the robot measured trajectory and the reference trajectory. This hierarchy is reflected in the structure and content of the book. Topics treated are: Modelling, Flight Planning, Trajectory Design and Control. Finally, some actual projects are described in the appendix. This volume will prove useful for researchers and practitioners working in Robotics and Automation, Aerospace Technology, Control and Artificial Intelligence.
This open access book highlights the autonomous and intelligent flight control of future launch vehicles for improving flight autonomy to plan ascent and descent trajectories onboard, and autonomously handle unexpected events or failures during the flight. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, space launch activities worldwide have grown vigorously. Meanwhile, commercial launches also account for the booming trend. Unfortunately, the risk of space launches still exists and is gradually increasing in line with the rapidly rising launch activities and commercial rockets. In the history of space launches, propulsion and control systems are the two main contributors to launch failures. With the development of information technologies, the increase of the functional density of hardware products, the application of redundant or fault-tolerant solutions, and the improvement of the testability of avionics, the launch losses caused by control systems exhibit a downward trend, and the failures induced by propulsion systems become the focus of attention. Under these failures, the autonomous planning and guidance control may save the missions. This book focuses on the latest progress of relevant projects and academic studies of autonomous guidance, especially on some advanced methods which can be potentially real-time implemented in the future control system of launch vehicles. In Chapter 1, the prospect and technical challenges are summarized by reviewing the development of launch vehicles. Chapters 2 to 4 mainly focus on the flight in the ascent phase, in which the autonomous guidance is mainly reflected in the online planning. Chapters 5 and 6 mainly discuss the powered descent guidance technologies. Finally, since aerodynamic uncertainties exert a significant impact on the performance of the ascent / landing guidance control systems, the estimation of aerodynamic parameters, which are helpful to improve flight autonomy, is discussed in Chapter 7. The book serves as a valuable reference for researchers and engineers working on launch vehicles. It is also a timely source of information for graduate students interested in the subject.
Fault Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control and Guidance for Aerospace demonstrates the attractive potential of recent developments in control for resolving such issues as flight performance, self protection and extended-life structures. Importantly, the text deals with a number of practically significant considerations: tuning, complexity of design, real-time capability, evaluation of worst-case performance, robustness in harsh environments, and extensibility when development or adaptation is required. Coverage of such issues helps to draw the advanced concepts arising from academic research back towards the technological concerns of industry. Initial coverage of basic definitions and ideas and a literature review gives way to a treatment of electrical flight control system failures: oscillatory failure, runaway, and jamming. Advanced fault detection and diagnosis for linear and linear-parameter-varying systems are described. Lastly recovery strategies appropriate to remaining actuator/sensor/communications resources are developed. The authors exploit experience gained in research collaboration with academic and major industrial partners to validate advanced fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control techniques with realistic benchmarks or real-world aeronautical and space systems. Consequently, the results presented in Fault Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control and Guidance for Aerospace, will be of interest in both academic and aerospatial-industrial milieux.
The key to opening the use of space to private enterprise and to broader public uses lies in reducing the cost of the transportation to space. More routine, affordable access to space will entail aircraft-like quick turnaround and reliable operations. Currently, the space Shuttle is the only reusable launch vehicle, and even parts of it are expendable while other parts require frequent and extensive refurbishment. NASA's highest priority new activity, the Reusable Launch Vehicle program, is directed toward developing technologies to enable a new generation of space launchers, perhaps but not necessarily with single stage to orbit capability. This book assesses whether the technology development, test and analysis programs in propulsion and materials-related technologies are properly constituted to provide the information required to support a December 1996 decision to build the X-33, a technology demonstrator vehicle; and suggest, as appropriate, necessary changes in these programs to ensure that they will support vehicle feasibility goals.
