Experimental Validation of Total Energy Control System for UAVs

Pedro Jimenez, Piotr Lichota, Daniel Agudelo and Krzysztof Rogowski
Additional contact information
Pedro Jimenez: Engineering Faculty, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Carrera 8H 172-20, Bogota 110141, Colombia
Piotr Lichota: Institute of Aeronautics and Applied Mechanics, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-665 Warsaw, Poland
Daniel Agudelo: Engineering Faculty, Universidad de San Buenaventura, Carrera 8H 172-20, Bogota 110141, Colombia
Krzysztof Rogowski: Institute of Aeronautics and Applied Mechanics, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-665 Warsaw, Poland

Energies, 2019, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of a Total Energy Control System (TECS) introduced by Lambregts to control unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) velocity and altitude by using the total energy distribution. Furthermore, an extended Kalman filter (EKF) approach was used to predict aircraft response in terms of angular rates and linear acceleration during a test flight campaign. From both approaches, state equations were obtained to model the aircraft using Matlab-Simulink. From an aerodynamic study, airplane characteristics were obtained in terms of non-dimensional derivatives and compared to those obtained from the experimental methods. It was determined that TECS approach was very accurate; however, disturbance errors could be decreased by adjusting some model parameters. On the other hand, it was difficult to obtain a real estimation from the EKF method due to the presence of turbulence during flight and the relatively low inertia of the scale model. Dynamic characteristics were validated using a low-cost inertial sensor that cab be easily integrated in UAV platforms. The gathered data can be used to predict model characteristics by integrating the information into flight simulators for future design development.

Keywords: Total Energy Control System; dynamics of flight; extended Kalman filter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/1/14/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/1/14/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2019:i:1:p:14-:d:299540

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().