Aggressive maneuvering of a thrust vectored ying wing : A receding horizon approach 1

This paper deals with the control of a thrust vec-tored ying wing known as the ducted fan, developed at California Institute of Technology. The experiment was developed to serve as a testbed for nonlinear control design. In an earlier paper, the authors reported simulation results based on a sim-pliied (no aerodynamics involved) planar model of the ducted fan around hover position. In this paper we report on the modeling and simulation of the ducted fan in forward ight, where aerodynamic forces and moments can no longer be ignored. A receding horizon scheme is developed to generate trajectories for the forward ight model. Using a more simpliied version of the model, some aggressive trajectories are generated. These tra-jectories are then used as a reference in the receding horizon scheme, and morphed into the trajec-tories of the full model. Simulation results depict the capabilities of the ducted fan as well as this methodology in performing aggressive maneuvers.