Interval Observers for Enhanced Shipboard Landing and Formation Control for Naval Aircraft
Abstract
A commonly observed feature in aerospace controls is undesirable transients, such as large deviations from desired set points, which, can arise from using worst case scenarios when estimating model parameters or external disturbances, and usually cannot be eliminat,ed by increasing control gains for systems with finite control authority. -In the proposed project, PI Burlion and Subawardee Maliso,ff would undertake farsighted high payoff basic research on the use of interval parameter estimates to design tracking controllers f,or models of shipboard landing and formation control of flying platforms under a wide range of operating conditions that include unc,ertain parameters and unmeasured external disturbances. -The central new idea here is to use an iterated projection technique based, on output measurements to shrink the intervals containing the unknown parameter values, which is unlike classical methods that use, fixed intervals that are based on worst case scenarios. -This has the potential to enhance a large class of control techniques incl,uding robust control, adaptive control, and robust reference governors. -This would lead to better performance guarantees and will u,ltimately lead to very agile aerodynamic control and safer operations in densely packed areas. The performance will thus be the main, criteria to assess the work. -The investigators theory and algorithms would be guided by and validated with aerospace models whos,e uncertainties call for interval contractors, and input or state constraints call for reference governors. They would conduct nume,rical and then real time experiments with quadcopters and fixed wing aircraft under simulated or real wind gusts in PI Burlions lab,oratory. -The investigators would know that they met success when they analyze the improvement in their flying platforms that is aff,orded by their newly developed interval update methods. In all cases, the results will be compared to the ones obtained when one use,s constant intervals. The improvement will be computed in terms of the tracking performance (which can be measured by the length of, the transient period during which the tracking error exceeds a prescribed threshold) and/or maximum wind gust rejection and/or unce,rtain parameters gain values. The comparison will thus be fair and accurate (since it would be based on the VICON or OptiTrack syst,ems indoors and on the RTK GPS outdoors) -The midterm exam would illustrate the interval parameter based control techniques on a) th,ree quadcopters flying in formation and b) one landing quadcopter when one motor has an unexpected decrease in thrust. -The final e,xam will illustrate the algorithms on a) a twin engine R/C plane in an open field and b) a landing quadcopter under severe wind gust,s produced by a Windshape generator in a secured arena.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 14, 2022
- Source ID
- N000142212135
Entities
People
- Laurent Burlion
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Rutgers University
- United States Navy