Category: Seminars and Conferences
State: Archived
19th September 2016

Corso di eccellenza "Navigation and Control of Unmanned Fixed-Wing and Rotorcraft: A Comprehensive Approach" tenuto dal Prof. Prof. Dr. Ing. Kimon Valavanis - University of Denver, Colorado – USA,

at 9.00 am, in Sala Riunioni “C. Ferrari” – DIMEAS, 2nd floor

During the first lesson will be defined the timetable of the lessons that, in any case, will finish within 23rd of September.
At the end of lessons (20 hours), to obtain “merit score”, a final test will be held.
Please contact SCUDO (scudo@polito.it) for credits.

PhD students are kindly requested to communicate their interest to fulvia.quagliotti@polito.it, vilma.boaglio@polito.it

Course Summary: The course provides a comprehensive study of unmanned fixed-wing and rotorcraft navigation and control, including a review of kinematics, dynamics and equations of motion, sensors, identification, controller design and implementation, as well as advances in unmanned aviation technology. A very detailed survey of linear, linearized, nonlinear and soft-computing based controller designs are discussed, the main focus being on helicopter navigation and control designs. A comprehensive comparison of advantages and limitations of implemented techniques follows, subsequently introducing a generalized ‘one-fits-all’ flight control system (FCS) in which the specific controller design approach is a plug-in-plug-out module. Implementation details and how to guarantee task execution given strict timing requirements is detailed. Case studies include simulation and experimental results for several prototype UAVs. Prerequisites: Knowledge of control systems is required. However, all required background information will be presented in class.
Intended audience: The course is suitable for advanced M.Sc. and PhD students who conduct research in (linear/nonlinear) control systems, robotics, UAVs, etc.

COURSE OUTLINE
Course modules include:

  • Introduction
    • Brief History of Unmanned Aviation
    • Types of Unmanned Aircraft
    • Current state-of-the-art
    • Challenges
  • Review of rigid body motions, homogeneous transformations, coordinate frames for aided navigation
    • Fixed-wing aircraft
    • Rotorcraft
  • 6-DoF Rigid body dynamics and kinematics
    • Derivation of Newton-Euler equations
    • Position and orientation dynamics
    • Derivation of forces and moments
    • Moment of inertia and the inertia tensor
  • Unmanned Fixed-Wing and Rotorcraft (main focus on rotorcraft)
  1. Definition and types/configurations
  2. Rotor heads
  3. Rotorcraft components/subsystems
  4. Rotors
    1. Rotor head and swash plate
    2. Engine
    3. Servos/actuators
    4. Fuselage
    5. Tail stabilizers (vertical and horizontal fins)
    6. Feedback gyro (single-axis yaw and 3D gyro)
  5. Pilot input mapping to control surfaces
  6. Forces generated / Aerodynamics
  7. Equations of motion (EOM)
  8. State space approach (Linear EOM, Linearized and nonlinear EOM)
  9. Different flight modes (hover, aggressive, non-aggressive)
  • Sensors and communication
  • UAS Navigation controller technology
  • System Identification
    • System ID general process
    • Parameter vs. Experimental
    • Time vs. Frequency
    • Frequency response method (Mettler), MOSCA (CMU)
    • Parameter based (Alberta)
    • Tools for flight testing/data collection
    • Simulation tools
  • Control fundamentals (State space vs I/O approaches)
    • Model-based, model-free methods
    • State space explanation
    • Linearization of EOM
    • Linear versus nonlinear versus model-free
    • Continuous versus discrete time
    • Linear systems (PID, LQG/LQR, H-∞, Gain Scheduling, etc.)
    • Nonlinear systems
    • Feedback linearization
    • Backstepping
    • Adaptive/MPC
    • Controller tuning/optimization State-space approach
  • Controller Design for Unmanned Rotorcraft
    • Linear/Non-linear
    • From design to implementation and testing
    • (Design, Simulation, Processor-In-the-Loop (PIL), Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL), Flight testing/implementation
  • XMOS based processor Implementation
  • Comprehensive Navigation-Control Architecture
    • Modularity
    • Add-on components (Fault-tolerance, etc.)
    • Timing requirements
  • Applications and case studies
  • Independent module: On Circulation Control Based fixed-wing aircraft
    • The Coanda effect
    • Fundamentals of Circulation Control (CC)
    • Designing CC wings (CCWs)
    • Designing CCW-based fixed-wing UAVs
    • Applications