Modelling and Hovering Stabilisation of a Free-Rotating Wing UAV

TL;DR

This paper presents a multibody model for a freewing UAV, enabling flight simulation and control design, along with experimental validation of hovering stability using nonlinear and PID controllers.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive multibody model and experimental validation framework for stabilizing a freewing UAV in hover and forward flight.

Findings

Successful hovering flights with nonlinear control

Effective stabilization of wing and fuselage

Comparison of state estimation methods

Abstract

We propose a multibody model of a freewing UAV. This model allows obtaining simulations of the UAV's behaviour and, in the future, to design a control law stabilising the entire flight envelope (hovering and forward flight). We also describe the realisation of a prototype and a comparison of possible methods for estimating the UAV's states. With this prototype, we report on experimental hovering flights with a non-linear incremental dynamic inversion controller to stabilise the wing and a proportional derivative controller for the fuselage stabilization.