Design, Modelling, Localization, and Control for Fire-Fighting Aerial Vehicles
Dimitris Chaikalis, Nikolaos Evangeliou, Anthony P. Tzes, Farshad Khorrami · 2022 30th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED) · 2022
A fire fighting aerial system is considered in this article. Such a system is comprised of a tethered hose, a high pressure water pump, and a multirotor aerial vehicle. In this paper, the overall dynamic model of this system is developed, taking into account the behavior of the hose and the recoil force of the exiting water-jet. The aerial vehicle is designed with vertical and lateral rotors, offering an additional actuation input to aid in compensation of the effects of the hose and the water-jet. A model-based controller is developed to guarantee stable flight of the aerial vehicle. A localization method is proposed, where the aerial vehicle’s relative position with respect to its base is computed by including a force sensor on the vehicle and solving the inverse of the hose curvature equations. Simulations are used to investigate the effectiveness of the overall developed model, the controller efficiency, and the accuracy of the force-based localization method.