Guidance control of a small unmanned aerial vehicle with a delta wing
Shuichi Tajima, Takuya Akasaka, Makoto Kumon, Kazuo Okabe · International Conference on Robotics and Automation · 2013
A small and light unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a delta-shaped main wing called a kiteplane is considered in this paper. The UAV is suitable for ground observation because of its slow flying speed, which can be achieved due to its light weight and large main wing; however, the aircraft can be greatly disturbed by a control command (set point) update or a wind disturbance. In order to compensate for this problem, this paper proposes a “bankand-turn” approach for path-following control based on nonlinear attitude control. The bank angle of the kiteplane is commanded so as to track the desired path, and the reference signal is designed using stability analysis. The results of a numerical simulation are also presented to validate the proposed approach.