Nonlinear \boldsymbol{\mathcal{H}}_{\boldsymbol\infty} Control of UAVs for Collision Avoidance in Gusty Environments

This paper proposes a nonlinear $\mathcal{H}_{\infty}$ controller for stabilization of velocities, attitudes and angular rates of a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in a windy environment. The suggested controller aims to achieve a steady-state flight condition in the presence of wind gusts such that the host UAV can be maneuvered to avoid collision with other UAVs during cruise flight with safety guarantees. This paper begins with building a proper model capturing flight aerodynamics of UAVs. Then a nonlinear controller is developed with gust attenuation and rapid response properties. Simulations are conducted for the Shadow UAV to verify performance of the proposed controller. Comparative studies with the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers demonstrate that the proposed controller exhibits great performance improvement in a gusty environment, making it suitable for integration into the design of flight control systems for cruise flight of UAVs.     

Conflict Detection and Resolution Method for Cooperating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper presents a Conflict Detection and Resolution (CDR) method for cooperating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) sharing airspace. The proposed method detects conflicts using an algorithm based on axis-aligned minimum bounding box and solves the detected conflicts cooperatively using a genetic algorithm that modifies the trajectories of the UAVs with an overall minimum cost. The method changes the initial flight plan of each UAV by adding intermediate waypoints that define the solution flight plan while maintaining their velocities. The method has been validated with many simulations and experimental results with multiple aerial vehicles platforms based on quadrotors in a common airspace. The experiments have been carried out in the multi-UAV aerial testbed of the Center for Advanced Aerospace Technologies (CATEC).     

禁飞区无人机预警算法研究

针对大量在空中无秩序飞行的无人机有可能会闯入飞机场等禁飞区的情况,为了避免发生空中交通安全事故,提出了一种无人机禁飞区预警算法。首先,该算法经过坐标变换将描述无人机位置点的GPS坐标转换成对应的平面坐标;接着,采用改进的最小二乘曲线拟合算法预测出无人机的飞行轨迹;然后,通过计算预测的飞行轨迹曲线在当前点的切线是否会与描述禁飞区的电子围栏相交,来判断无人机是否会进入禁飞区。同时,所有的无人机都会安装上飞行数据记录模块,来实时地为该算法提供无人机的飞行状态信息。最后,通过MATLAB仿真实验验证了该预警算法的可行性和有效性,表明该算法可以对禁飞区周围的无人机进行预警。     

Accurate Modeling and Robust Hovering Control for a Quad–rotor VTOL Aircraft

Quad-robot type (QRT) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been developed for quick detection and observation of the circumstances under calamity environment such as indoor fire spots. The UAV is equipped with four propellers driven by each electric motor, an embedded controller, an Inertial Navigation System (INS) using three rate gyros and accelerometers, a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) camera with wireless communication transmitter for observation, and an ultrasonic range sensor for height control. Accurate modeling and robust flight control of QRT UAVs are mainly discussed in this work. Rigorous dynamic model of a QRT UAV is obtained both in the reference and body frame coordinate systems. A disturbance observer (DOB) based controller using the derived dynamic models is also proposed for robust hovering control. The control input induced by DOB is helpful to use simple equations of motion satisfying accurately derived dynamics. The developed hovering robot shows stable flying performances under the adoption of DOB and the vision based localization method. Although a model is incorrect, DOB method can design a controller by regarding the inaccurate part of the model and sensor noises as disturbances. The UAV can also avoid obstacles using eight IR (Infrared) and four ultrasonic range sensors. This kind of micro UAV can be widely used in various calamity observation fields without danger of human beings under harmful environment. The experimental results show the performance of the proposed control algorithm.     

无人机辅助智能电网故障终端数据采集优化策略

随着光伏等各类清洁能源的广泛使用,在移动边缘计算的支撑下,无人机经常被用于户外电网终端设备,特别是运行偏差故障终端的数据采集。然而,待采集的终端运行出现差错、终端数量大幅度增长以及无人机有限的能量和动态的飞行等问题,导致无人机难以快速获得待检测终端的准确位置。基于此,设计一种基于边缘计算的无人机辅助故障终端数据采集优化策略。通过构建基于随机分布的位置误差模型,研究一种无人机飞行轨迹和待采集终端设备的任务传输联合优化策略。联合利用 Bernstein 型不等式、凸优化和隐枚举法,构建高效的两阶段优化求解算法。仿真结果表明所提数据采集策略中无人机可以更加靠近户外的电网故障终端设备,数据采集的时间更长且准确率更高。     

Development and Evaluation of a Chase View for UAV Operations in Cluttered Environments

Civilian applications for UAVs will bring these vehicles into low flying areas cluttered with obstacles such as building, trees, power lines, and more importantly civilians. The high accident rate of UAVs means that civilian use will come at a huge risk unless we design systems and protocols that can prevent UAV accidents, better train operators and augment pilot performance. This paper presents two methods for generating a chase view to the pilot for UAV operations in cluttered environments. The chase view gives the operator a virtual view from behind the UAV during flight. This is done by generating a virtual representation of the vehicle and surrounding environment while integrating it with the real-time onboard camera images. Method I presents a real-time mapping approach toward generating the surrounding environment and Method II uses a prior model of the operating environment. Experimental results are presented from tests where subjects flew in a H0 scale environment using a 6 DOF gantry system. Results showed that the chase view improved UAV operator performance over using the traditional onboard camera view.     

基于动态角色分配的一致性协同无人机编队控制

随着微电子技术、数字通信技术的飞速发展,无人机编队已应用到许多领域。针对无人机编队保持和编队中能耗问题,提出了一种基于动态角色分配的一致性协同无人机编队控制方法。根据无人机运动学模型设计了一种反馈线性化姿态控制器。在此基础上,基于长机僚机模式设计了一种一致性编队控制算法,提升了编队系统的鲁棒性。同时,设计了一种基于匈牙利算法动态角色分配方法,使多无人机在执行任务过程中可依据具体的周围环境情况来重新制定编队方案确定各无人机位置以此来缩小执行任务周期,同时减小整体能量消耗,并以5架无人机构成编队为例开展了编队飞行仿真分析。仿真结果表明,基于动态角色分配的一致性协同无人机编队控制算法保证了编队控制系统的控制精度和鲁棒性,有效地减小了整体的能量消耗。     

Recognition of a landing platform for unmanned aerial vehicles by using computer vision-based techniques

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is growing significantly for many and varied purposes. During the mission, an outdoor UAV is guided by following the planned path using GPS signals. However, the GPS capability may become defective or the environment may be GPS-denied, and an additional safety aid is therefore required for the automatic landing phase that is independent of GPS data. Most UAVs are equipped with machine vision systems which, together with onboard analysis, can be used for safe, automatic landing. This contributes greatly to the overall success of autonomous flight.This paper proposes an automatic expert system, based on image segmentation procedures, that assists safe landing through recognition and relative orientation of the UAV and platform. The proposed expert system exploits the human experience that has been incorporated into the machine vision system, which is mapped into the proposed image processing modules. The result is an improved reliability capability that could be incorporated into any UAV, and is especially robust for rotary wing UAVs. This is clearly a desirable fail-safe capability.     

Design of a Commercial Hybrid VTOL UAV System

For the last four decades Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) have been extensively used for military operations that include tracking, surveillance, active engagement with weapons and airborne data acquisition. UAVs are also in demand commercially due to their advantages in comparison to manned vehicles. These advantages include lower manufacturing and operating costs, flexibility in configuration depending on customer request and not risking the pilot on demanding missions. Even though civilian UAVs currently constitute 3 % of the UAV market, it is estimated that their numbers will reach up to 10 % of the UAV market within the next 5 years. Most of the civilian UAV applications require UAVs that are capable of doing a wide range of different and complementary operations within a composite mission. These operations include taking off and landing from limited runway space, while traversing the operation region in considerable cruise speed for mobile tracking applications. This is in addition to being able traverse in low cruise speeds or being able to hover for stationary measurement and tracking. All of these complementary and but different operational capabilities point to a hybrid unmanned vehicle concept, namely the Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) UAVs. In addition, the desired UAV system needs to be cost-efficient while providing easy payload conversion for different civilian applications. In this paper, we review the preliminary design process of such a capable civilian UAV system, namely the TURAC VTOL UAV. TURAC UAV is aimed to have both vertical take-off and landing and Conventional Take-off and Landing (CTOL) capability. TURAC interchangeable payload pod and detachable wing (with potential different size variants) provides capability to perform different mission types, including long endurance and high cruise speed operations. In addition, the TURAC concept is to have two different variants. The TURAC A variant is an eco-friendly and low-noise fully electrical platform which includes 2 tilt electric motors in the front, and a fixed electric motor and ducted fan in the rear, where as the TURAC B variant is envisioned to use high energy density fuel cells for extended hovering time. In this paper, we provide the TURAC UAV’s iterative design and trade-off studies which also include detailed aerodynamic and structural configuration analysis. For the aerodynamic analysis, an in-house software including graphical user interface has been developed to calculate the aerodynamic forces and moments by using the Vortex Lattice Method (VLM). Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) studies are performed to determine the aerodynamic effects for various configurations For structural analysis, a Finite Element Model (FEM) of the TURAC has been prepared and its modal analysis is carried out. Maximum displacements and maximal principal stresses are calculated and used for streamlining a weight efficient fuselage design. Prototypes have been built to show success of the design at both hover and forward flight regime. In this paper, we also provide the flight management and autopilot architecture of the TURAC. The testing of the controller performance has been initiated with the prototype of TURAC. Current work focuses on the building of the full fight test prototype of the TURAC UAV and aerodynamic modeling of the transition flight.     

基于元胞自动机的蜂群无人机故障影响模型

基于固定翼无人机飞行特性以及蜂群无人机控制策略,针对无人机控制器遭受恶意攻击的情形,采用时序网络与元胞自动机理论分析蜂群无人机故障影响机理.首先,通过时序网络分析蜂群无人机拓扑网络的变化情况,提出基于跳数的故障传播路径的确定方法;其次,考虑蜂群无人机状态信息,建立符合蜂群无人机特征的元胞对象,同时基于局部信息交互原则,确定元胞自动机的状态演变规则,并依据近邻信息对无人机控制律的影响,提出矢量投影法来确定故障影响权值,辨识出各无人机故障影响程度的动态变化情况;最后,建立仿真模型,利用预测与实际故障影响程度结果,基于DCG算法与模式距离验证所建故障影响模型的有效性.     

无人机辅助的移动边缘计算中的任务分配策略

在使用无人机（UAV）作为计算卸载的数据收集器对用户设备（UE）提供移动边缘计算（MEC）服务的场景下,设计了一种通过UAV实现高效的UE覆盖的无线通信策略。首先,在给定UE分布的条件下,对于UAV的飞行轨迹和通信策略,使用了连续凸逼近（SCA）的优化方法来得出一种可以使全局能量最小化的近似最优解;此外,对于UE大范围分布或任务量较大的场景,提出了一种自适应聚类算法,以将地面的UE划分成尽量少的聚类,并保证每个聚类中全部UE的卸载数据都可以在一次飞行中全部完成收集;最后,将每个聚类中UE的计算卸载数据收集任务分配给一次飞行,从而达到减少单个UAV完成任务所需的派遣次数或多UAV执行任务所需的UAV派遣数量的目的。仿真结果表明,所提方法可以生成相比K-Means算法更少的聚类数量且能快速收敛,适用于UE大范围分布下UAV辅助的计算卸载场景。     

基于三维程控的无人机协同编队飞行研究

基于三维程控飞行策略,对多无人机(UAV)协同编队飞行控制进行研究,提出一种多机同方位任务需求的编队控制方法.采用“长机-僚机”编队结构模式控制编队飞行,以编队中的长机航迹坐标为基准坐标系实现了僚机与长机相对位置一致的控制;实现了编队中所有无人机同时到达指定位置并保持速度相对稳定的控制.通过航路规划和编队遥调,实现了人工干预与自动控制结合的编队飞行策略.仿真结果表明,该方法具有较好的可实施性、管理性、应用性和安全性.     

基于鸽群行为机制的多无人机自主编队

受启发于无人机(unmanned aerial vehicle,UAV)编队飞行与生物群体社会性行为的相似性,本文提出了一种基于鸽群行为机制的多无人机自主编队控制方法.首先通过模仿鸽群特有的层级行为,建立了鸽群行为机制模型.该模型在已有群集模型基础上,采用有向图和人工势场理论对鸽群中的拓扑结构和领导机制进行建模.在深入分析无人机自主编队飞行仿生机理的基础上,设计了一种基于鸽群行为机制的无人机自主编队控制器.该控制器以鸽群行为机制模型为核心,还包含两个辅助环节,即控制指令解算器和状态转换器.最后,通过系列仿真实验验证了无人机群可在本文所设计的无人机自主编队控制器作用下形成预期的编队队形,并可在复杂长机运动条件下保持队形.     

Persistent UAV Service: An Improved Scheduling Formulation and Prototypes of System Components

The flight duration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is limited by their battery or fuel capacity. As a consequence, the duration of missions that can be pursued by UAVs without supporting logistics is restricted. However, a system of UAVs that is supported by automated logistics structures, such as fuel service stations and orchestration algorithms, may pursue missions of conceivably indefinite duration. This may be accomplished by handing off the mission tasks to fully fueled replacement UAVs when the current fleet grows weary. The drained UAVs then seek replenishment from nearby logistics support facilities. To support the vision of a persistent fleet of UAVs pursuing missions across a field of operations, we develop an improved mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model that can serve to support the system’s efforts to orchestrate the operations of numerous UAVs, missions and logistics facilities. Further, we look toward the future implementation of such a persistent fleet outdoors and develop prototype components required for such a system. In particular, we develop and demonstrate the concerted operation of a scheduling model, UAV onboard vision-based guidance system and replenishment stations.     

Design of small hand‐launched solar‐powered UAVs: From concept study to a multi‐day world endurance record flight

We present the development process behind AtlantikSolar, a small 6.9 kg hand‐launchable low‐altitude solar‐powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that recently completed an 81‐hour continuous flight and thereby established a new flight endurance world record for all aircraft below 50 kg mass. The goal of our work is to increase the usability of such solar‐powered robotic aircraft by maximizing their perpetual flight robustness to meteorological deteriorations such as clouds or winds. We present energetic system models and a design methodology, implement them in our publicly available conceptual design framework for perpetual flight‐capable solar‐powered UAVs, and finally apply the framework to the AtlantikSolar UAV. We present the detailed AtlantikSolar characteristics as a practical design example. Airframe, avionics, hardware, state estimation, and control method development for autonomous flight operations are described. Flight data are used to validate the conceptual design framework. Flight results from the continuous 81‐hour and 2,338 km covered ground distance flight show that AtlantikSolar achieves 39% minimum state‐of‐charge, 6.8 h excess time and 6.2 h charge margin. These performance metrics are a significant improvement over previous solar‐powered UAVs. A performance outlook shows that AtlantikSolar allows perpetual flight in a 6‐month window around June 21 at mid‐European latitudes, and that multi‐day flights with small optical‐ or infrared‐camera payloads are possible for the first time. The demonstrated performance represents the current state‐of‐the‐art in solar‐powered low‐altitude perpetual flight performance. We conclude with lessons learned from the three‐year AtlantikSolar UAV development process and with a sensitivity analysis that identifies the most promising technological areas for future solar‐powered UAV performance improvements.     

Three-dimensional position estimation method via AM pulse light modulation and an application to control multiple UAVs

ABSTRACT

In this study, a three-dimensional position estimation is proposed to estimate self-position via amplitude-modulated pulse infrared light to solve the problem of position estimation from an existing device used in the cooperation of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) that can be used in various environments. The proposed method estimates self-position as the distance between the receiver and the transmitter and the angle of direction by attenuation of amplitude-modulated pulse infrared light. By attaching a transmitter to a leader UAV and a receiver to follower UAVs, the cooperation flight can be achieved. The following three experiments are conducted: (1) evaluation of the accuracy of self-position estimation, (2) implementation of the proposed method on an UAV, and (3) evaluation of the robustness of the proposed method in an outdoor environment. The findings confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method. The proposed approach allows estimation of position with high speed, precision in various environments, and low-cost devices.     

基于改进A*算法的无人机避障路径规划

近年来,物流行业的飞速发展,运输是物流的重要环节之一,根据数据显示,运输的成本占据整个物流成本的50%以上.无人机的使用有效的控制了运输成本,合理规划物流无人机的飞行路线,也起着至关重要的作用.在物流无人机的航迹规划中,必须保证无人机飞行过程中能够准确避开禁飞区.本文基于A^*算法,结合多种类型的禁飞区,设计出一种改进算法,能够找到任意两客户点间无人机避障飞行的最优路线.仿真结果表明,本文所设计的算法能够有效解决多类型禁飞区并存的无人机避障路径规划问题.     

An adaptive vision-based autopilot for mini flying machines guidance,navigation and control

The design of reliable navigation and control systems for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) based only on visual cues and inertial data has many unsolved challenging problems, ranging from hardware and software development to pure control-theoretical issues. This paper addresses these issues by developing and implementing an adaptive vision-based autopilot for navigation and control of small and mini rotorcraft UAVs. The proposed autopilot includes a Visual Odometer (VO) for navigation in GPS-denied environments and a nonlinear control system for flight control and target tracking. The VO estimates the rotorcraft ego-motion by identifying and tracking visual features in the environment, using a single camera mounted on-board the vehicle. The VO has been augmented by an adaptive mechanism that fuses optic flow and inertial measurements to determine the range and to recover the 3D position and velocity of the vehicle. The adaptive VO pose estimates are then exploited by a nonlinear hierarchical controller for achieving various navigational tasks such as take-off, landing, hovering, trajectory tracking, target tracking, etc. Furthermore, the asymptotic stability of the entire closed-loop system has been established using systems in cascade and adaptive control theories. Experimental flight test data over various ranges of the flight envelope illustrate that the proposed vision-based autopilot performs well and allows a mini rotorcraft UAV to achieve autonomously advanced flight behaviours by using vision.     

路网约束下异构机器人系统路径规划方法

由无人机(Unmanned aerial vehicles, UAV)和地面移动机器人组成的异构机器人系统在协作执行任务时,可以充分发挥两类机器人各自的优势.无人机运动灵活,但通常续航能力有限;地面机器人载荷多,适合作为无人机的着陆平台和移动补给站,但运动受路网约束.本文研究这类异构机器人系统协作路径规划问题.为了降低完成任务的时间代价,提出一种由蚁群算法(Ant colony optimization, ACO)和遗传算法(Genetic algorithm, GA)相结合的两步法对地面机器人和无人机的路线进行解耦,同时规划地面机器人和无人机的路线.第1步使用蚁群算法为地面机器人搜索可行路线.第2步对无人机的最优路径建模,采用遗传算法求解并将无人机路径长度返回至第1步中,用于更新路网的信息素参数,从而实现异构协作系统路径的整体优化.另外,为了进一步降低无人机的飞行时间代价,研究了无人机在其续航能力内连续完成多任务的协作路径规划问题.最后,通过大量仿真实验验证了所提方法的有效性.     

考虑分配次序的无人机协同目标分配建模与遗传算法求解

本文研究了动态战场环境中的多无人机协同目标分配(MUCTA)问题.首先通过分析无人机(UAV)分配次序对打击任务总收益的影响,设计了动态战场环境的更新规则.将航程代价和任务代价作为惩罚项修正目标函数,建立了考虑分配次序的UAVs协同目标分配优化模型.然后针对模型的物理意义改进了遗传算法基因编码方式,设计了MUCTA遗传算法.该算法利用状态转移思想,引进SDR算子获得多种分配次序种群,同时以单行变异算子修正UAV与目标对应关系,并采用最优个体法和轮盘赌法筛选子代个体.最后仿真结果验证了所设计算法的有效性.