The transitional flight of tail-sitter aircraft is a challenging problem because the flight includes a wide operating range with nonlinearity and at low speed approaches the stall. In order to solve this problem, a robust autopilot design method using a variable environment genetic algorithm (VE-GA) is proposed. VE-GA is a new robust optimization method based on a real coded genetic algorithm (...

Abstract: The paper addresses the design of an autopilot for small scale helicopters to let the vertical, lateral, longitudinal and yaw attitude dynamics to track aggressive references. The paper is mostly focused on robust control aspects of helicopters. In particular the distinguish feature of the control law proposed in the paper is the ability to deal with the presence of possible severe un...

This paper explores the feasibility of roll–pitch–yaw integrated autopilots for a high angle-of-attack missile. Investigation of the aerodynamic characteristics indicates strong cross-coupling effects between the motions in longitudinal and lateral directions. Robust control techniques based on H1 synthesis are employed to design roll– pitch–yaw integrated autopilots. The performance of the pro...

Traditionally, missile autopilots have been designed using linear control approaches with gain scheduling. Autopilot design is typically carried out in the frequency domain and the plant is linearized around various operating points on the trajectory. Moreover, three single axis autopilots are usually designed without considering the interaction among the motion axes, i.e., the autopilots in ea...

In this paper, a flight path rate demand two loop autopilot in pitch plane called lateral autopilot is considered where the steady state gain of the autopilot system is non-unity .The present work is an attempt to achieve a unity steady state gain of the autopilot system which generates a flight path rate output for a flight path rate command. For this, a PI controller is introduced in the redu...

There is a growing interest in the modeling and control of model helicopters using nonlinear dynamic models and nonlinear control. Application of a new intelligent control approach called Brain Emotional Learning Based Intelligent Controller (BELBIC) to design autopilot for an autonomous helicopter is addressed in this paper. This controller is applied to a nonlinear model of a helicopter. This...

We present a real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation environment for the validation of a new hierarchical path planning and control algorithm for a small fixed-wing UAV. The complete control algorithm is validated through on-board, realtime implementation on a small autopilot having limited computational resources. We present two distinct real-time software frameworks for implementing t...

This paper presents a novel formulation of the flight dynamic equations that permits a rapid solution for the design of trajectory following autopilots for nonlinear aircraft dynamic models. A robust autopilot control structure is developed based on the combination of the good features the Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (NDI) method, Integrator Backstepping method, Time Scale separation and Contro...