Nonlinear Control of a Tethered UAV: the Taut Cable case

TL;DR

This paper develops a nonlinear control strategy for tethered UAVs that maintains stability and tautness of the cable during hovering, combining cascade control and a novel reference governor to handle constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a new control framework that ensures stability and cable tautness for tethered UAVs using a cascade control and a reference governor scheme.

Findings

Successful stabilization of tethered UAVs in simulations

Guarantee of cable tautness during operation

Effective handling of nonlinear constraints

Abstract

This paper focuses on the design of a stabilizing control law for an aerial vehicle which is physically connected to a ground station by means of a tether cable. By taking advantage of the tensile force acting along the taut cable, it is shown that the tethered UAV is able to maintain a non-zero attitude while hovering in a constant position. The control objective is to stabilize the desired configuration while simultaneously ensuring that the cable remains taut at all times. This leads to a nonlinear control problem subject to constraints. This paper provides a two-step solution. First, the system is stabilized using a cascade control scheme based on thrust vectoring. Then, constraint satisfaction is guaranteed using a novel Reference Governor scheme.