A Novel Motor Synchronization Method for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Distributed Electric Propulsion System
Ruiheng Zhang, Tianying Yu, Haoyu Wang, Xiaopeng Wang, Yuhua Du, Yigeng Huangfu, Aili Fan · 2023
This paper proposes a novel motor synchronization method for unmanned aerial vehicles with distributed electric propulsion system (DEP-UAV). Compared with conventional aircraft with a single motor, propeller management in DEP-UAV is more delicate and represents unique challenges. Specifically, motors with asynchronous rotating speed would generate asymmetric thrusts along the DEP-UAV, which could result in undesired moment imbalance on the aircraft. A model-based distributed control algorithm is developed, which synchronizes the rotating speed of multiple motors to the desired value. The proposed method runs on a sparse communication network, which avoids the system's single-point-of-failure; additionally, the control gains are customized regarding each motor's mechanical characteristics, which ensures the system's dynamic performance without introducing excessive computational cost. The convergence of the proposed method has been analytically proved and its dynamic performance has been validated using a Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop (C-HIL) testbed for DEP-UAV application.