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Robust μ-synthesis Loop Shaping for Altitude Flight Dynamics of a Flying-Wing Airframe

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Abstract

In this paper we present a centralised flight-by-wire system based on μ-synthesis approach to the longitudinal flight motion of our experimental flying wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), P15035 series. The challenge associated with our UAV is related to the fact that all motions of our UAV are controlled by two independently-actuated-ailerons namely elevons, together with its throttle. The scope of this research, nonetheless, falls within the area of elevon control based on the trimmed linear longitudinal flight modes obtained experimentally while throttle was set constant. The reason for considering μ-synthesis autopilot is to minimise the effects of uncertainty in modelling by maximising the amount of tolerable uncertainty within our system’s bandwidth as we aim to minimise the structure singular value μ of the corresponding robust performance associated with the uncertain systems. Second, it also provides flexibility in tunning due to the absence of partitioning model of MIMO system. Hence the entire autopilot was designed by keeping the system model as a whole. We also perform a comparative study with respect to well-known \(\textbf {H}_{\infty }\) mixed sensitivity autopilot. Our study indicates that the μ synthesis autopilot designed possesses better performances both in time and frequency domain as indicated by reasonably quick settling time in the absence of overshoot while still maintaining better robust stability margin.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Fendy Santoso

  2. Institute of Intelligent Machines, Hefei Institute of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Ming Liu

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, 3800, Australia

    Fendy Santoso, Ming Liu & Gregory K. Egan

Authors
  1. Fendy Santoso
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  2. Ming Liu
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  3. Gregory K. Egan
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Correspondence to Fendy Santoso.

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Santoso, F., Liu, M. & Egan, G.K. Robust μ-synthesis Loop Shaping for Altitude Flight Dynamics of a Flying-Wing Airframe. J Intell Robot Syst 79, 259–273 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-014-0059-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-014-0059-0

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