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Incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion is a sensor-based control approach that promises to provide high-performance nonlinear control without requiring a detailed model of the controlled vehicle. In the context of attitude control of micro air vehicles, incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion only uses a control effectiveness model and uses estimates of the angular accelerations to replace the rest of the model. This paper provides solutions for two major challenges of incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion control: how to deal with measurement and actuator delays, and how to deal with a changing control effectiveness. The main contributions of this article are 1) a proposed method to correctly take into account the delays occurring when deriving angular accelerations from angular rate measurements; 2) the introduction of adaptive incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion, which can estimate the control effectiveness online, eliminating the need for manual parameter estimation or tuning; and 3) the incorporation of the momentum of the propellers in the controller. This controller is suitable for vehicles that experience a different control effectiveness across their flight envelope. Furthermore, this approach requires only very coarse knowledge of model parameters in advance. Real-world experiments show the high performance, disturbance rejection, and adaptiveness properties. Read More: http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.G001490
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Adaptive Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion
for Attitude Control of Micro Aerial Vehicles
Ewoud J.J. Smeur1and Qiping Chu2and Guido C.H.E. de Croon3
Delft University of Technology, Delft, Zuid-Holland, 2629HS, Netherlands
Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) is a sensor-based control approach
that promises to provide high performance nonlinear control without requiring a de-
tailed model of the controlled vehicle. In the context of attitude control of Micro Air
Vehicles, INDI only uses a control effectiveness model and uses estimates of the an-
gular accelerations to replace the rest of the model. This paper provides solutions for
two major challenges of INDI control: how to deal with measurement and actuator
delays and how to deal with a changing control effectiveness. The main contributions
of this article are: (1) a proposed method to correctly take into account the delays
occurring when deriving angular accelerations from angular rate measurements, (2)
the introduction of adaptive INDI, which can estimate the control effectiveness online,
eliminating the need for manual parameter estimation or tuning and (3) the incorpo-
ration of the momentum of the propellers in the controller. This controller is suitable
for vehicles that experience a different control effectiveness across their flight envelope.
Furthermore, this approach requires only very course knowledge of model parameters
in advance. Real-world experiments show the high performance, disturbance rejection
and adaptiveness properties.
1PhD Candidate, Delft University of Technology, Control and Simulation
2Associate Professor, Control and Simulation, member.
3Assistant Professor, Control and Simulation.
1
Nomenclature
b= Width of the vehicle, m
Iv= Moment of inertia matrix of the vehicle, kg m2
Ir= Moment of inertia matrix of the rotor, kg m2
I= Identity matrix
i= Rotor index
k1= Force constant of the rotors, kg m/rad
k2= Moment constant of the rotors, kg m2/rad
l= Length of the vehicle, m
Ma= Aerodynamic moment vector acting on the vehicle, Nm
Mc= Control moment vector acting on the vehicle, Nm
Mr= Moment vector acting on the propeller, Nm
Ts= Sample time of the controller, s
u= Actuator input vector, rad/s
v= Vehicle velocity vector, m/s
µ= Adaptation rate diagonal matrix
= Vehicle angular rate vector, rad/s
˙
= Angular acceleration vector, rad/s2
ω= Angular rate vector of the four rotors around the body zaxis, rad/s
ωi= Angular rate vector of rotor iaround each of the body axes, rad/s
I. Introduction
Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have increased in popularity as low-cost lightweight processors
and inertial measurement units (IMUs) have become available through the smartphone revolution.
The inertial sensors allow stabilization of unstable platforms by feedback algorithms. Typically,
the stabilization algorithm used for MAVs is simple Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) control
[1, 2]. Problems with PID control occur when the vehicle is highly nonlinear or when the vehicle is
subject to large disturbances like wind gusts.
2
Alternatively, we could opt for a model based attitude controller. A model based controller that
can deal with nonlinear systems is nonlinear dynamic inversion (NDI), which involves modeling all
of the MAV’s forces and dynamics. Theoretically, this method can remove all nonlinearities from the
system and create a linearizing control law. However, NDI is very sensitive to model inaccuracies
[3]. Obtaining an accurate model is often expensive or impossible with the constraints of the sensors
that are carried onboard a small MAV.
The incremental form of NDI, Incremental NDI or INDI, is less model dependent and more
robust. It has been described in the literature since the late nineties [4, 5], sometimes referred to as
simplified [6] or enhanced [7] NDI. Compared to NDI, instead of modeling the angular acceleration
based on the state and inverting the actuator model to get the control input, the angular acceleration
is measured and an increment of the control input is calculated based on a desired increment in
angular acceleration. This way, any unmodeled dynamics, including wind gust disturbances, are
measured and compensated. Since INDI makes use of a sensor measurement to replace a large part
of the model, it is considered a sensor based approach.
INDI faces two major challenges. Firstly, the measurement of angular acceleration is often
noisy and requires filtering. This filtering introduces a delay in the measurement, which should be
compensated for. Secondly, the method relies on inverting and therefore modeling the controls. To
achieve a more flexible controller, the control effectiveness should be determined adaptively.
Delay in the angular acceleration measurement has been a prime topic in INDI research.
A proposed method to deal with these measurement delays is predictive filtering [8]. However, the
prediction of angular acceleration requires additional modeling. Moreover, disturbances cannot be
predicted. Initially, a setup with multiple accelerometers was proposed by Ostroff and Bacon [5] to
measure the angular acceleration. This setup has some drawbacks, because it is complex and the
accelerometers are sensitive to structural vibrations. Later, they discussed the derivation of angular
acceleration from gyroscope measurements by using a second order filter [9]. To compensate for the
delay introduced by the filter, Ostroff and Bacon use a lag filter on the applied input to the system.
We show in this paper that perfect synchronization of input and measured output can be achieved
by applying the filter used for the gyroscope differentiation on the incremented input as well.
3
Other research focused on compensating delays in the inputs by using a Lyapunov based con-
troller design [10]. In this paper, we show that delayed inputs (actuator dynamics) are naturally
handled by the INDI controller.
The control effectiveness is the sole model still required by INDI. The parameters can be
obtained by careful modeling of the actuators and the moment of inertia, or by analyzing the
input output data from flight logs. However, even if such a tedious process is followed, the control
effectiveness can change during flight. For instance, this can occur due to changes in flight conditions
[11] or actuator damage [12]. In order to cope with this, we propose a method to adaptively
determine the control effectiveness matrices.
In this paper, we present three main contributions: (1) a mathematically sound way of dealing
with the delays originating from filtering of the gyroscope measurements, (2) the introduction of
an adaptive INDI scheme, which can estimate the control effectiveness online and (3) incorporation
of propeller momentum in the controller design. These contributions are implemented and demon-
strated on a Parrot Bebop quadrotor running the Paparazzi open source autopilot software. This
is a commercially available quadrotor and the code is publicly available on Github[17].
The presented theory and results generalize to other vehicles in a straightforward manner. We
have applied this control approach successfully to a variety of quadrotors. Some of these MAVs
were able to measure the rotational rate of the rotors (actuator feedback), but some did not have
this ability. The INDI controller is believed to scale well to different types of MAVs like helicopter,
multirotor, fixedwing or hybrid.
The outline of this paper is as follows. First, a model of the MAV will be discussed in Section
II. Second, Section III will deal with INDI and the analysis for this controller for a quadrotor.
Section IV is about the adaptive extension of INDI. Finally, in Section V, the experimental setup
is explained, followed by the results of the experiments in Section VI.
II. MAV Model
The Bebop quadrotor is shown in Figure 1 along with axis definitions. The actuators drive
the four rotors, whose angular velocity in the body frame is given by ωi= [ωix, ωiy, ωiz], where i
4
denotes the rotor number. The center of gravity is located in the origin of the axis system and the
distance to each of the rotors along the Xaxis is given by land along the Yaxis by b.
l
Z
X
Y
b
M
2
M
3
M
4
M
1
Fig. 1 The Bebop Quadcopter used in the experiments with axis definitions.
If the angular velocity vector of the vehicle is denoted by = [p, q, r]Tand its derivative by ˙
,
the rotational dynamics are given by Euler’s equation of motion [13], more specifically the one that
describes rotation. If we consider the body axis system as our coordinate system we get Eq. (1) for
the angular velocity of the vehicle.
Iv˙
+×Iv=M(1)
Where Mis the moment vector acting on the vehicle. If we consider the rotating propellers, still
in the body coordinate system, we obtain:
Ir˙ωi+×Irωi=Mri(2)
Where ωiis the angular rate vector of the ith propeller in the vehicle body axes and the angular
rotation of the coordinate system, equal to the vehicle body rates. The rotors are assumed to be flat
in the z axis, such that the inertia matrix Irhas elements that are zero: Irxz =Iry z = 0 . Because
the coordinate system is fixed to the vehicle, Irxx ,Irxy and Iryy are not constant in time. However,
as is shown later on, the terms containing these moments of inertia will disappear. Expanding Eq.
5
(2) into its three components gives:
Irxx ˙ωixIry y zωiyIrxy zωix+Irzz yωiz=Mrix
Iryy ˙ωiy+Irxx zωix+Irxy zωiyIrzz xωiz=Mriy
Irzz ˙ωizIrxx yωixIrxy yωiy+Iryy xωiy+Irxy xωix=Mriz
(3)
The propellers are light-weight and have a small moment of inertia compared to the vehicle. Relevant
precession terms are therefore those that contain the relatively large ωiz. Since the rotors spin around
the zaxis, it is safe to assume that ωixωizand ωiyωizand that ˙ωixand ˙ωiyare negligible.
Then, the moments exerted on the rotors due to their rotational dynamics are given by Eq. (4).
Note the presence of the term Irzz ˙ωiz, which is the moment necessary to change the angular velocity
of a rotor. In Section VI, it will be shown that this term is important.
Mri=
Mrix
Mriy
Mriz
=
Irzz yωiz
Irzz xωiz
Irzz ˙ωiz
(4)
This equation holds for each of the four rotors, so the moment acting on a rotor is given a
subscript ito indicate the rotor number. The total moment due to the rotational effects of the
rotors is shown in Eq. (5). Since motors 1 and 3 spin in the opposite direction of rotors 2 and 4, a
factor (1)iis introduced. As we are left with only the zcomponent for the angular velocity of each
rotor, we will omit this subscript and continue with the vector ω= [ω1z, ..., ω4z]T= [ω1, ..., ω4]T.
Mr=P4
i=1 Mri=P4
i=1(1)i+1
Irzz yωi
Irzz xωi
Irzz ˙ωi
=
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
Irzz Irzz Irzz Irzz
˙ω1
˙ω2
˙ω3
˙ω4
+
Irzz yIrzz yIrzz yIrzz y
Irzz xIrzz xIrzz xIrzz x
0000
ω1
ω2
ω3
ω4
(5)
Now consider the Euler Equation, Eq. (1), for the entire vehicle. The moments from the rotor
dynamics are subtracted from the other moments yielding:
6
Iv˙
+×Iv=Mc(ω) + Ma(,v)Mr(ω,˙ω,)(6)
Here, Ivis the moment of inertia matrix of the vehicle, Mr(ω,˙ω,)is the gyroscopic effect of the
rotors, Mc(ω)is the control moment vector generated by the rotors and Ma(,v)is the moment
vector generated by aerodynamic effects, which depends on the angular rates and the MAV velocity
vector v. The control moment Mc(ω)is elaborated in Eq. (7), where k1is the force constant of
the rotors, k2is the moment constant of the rotors and band lare defined in Figure 1.
Mc=
bk1(ω2
1+ω2
2+ω2
3ω2
4)
lk1(ω2
1+ω2
2ω2
3ω2
4)
k2(ω2
1ω2
2+ω2
3ω2
4)
=
bk1bk1bk1bk1
lk1lk1lk1lk1
k2k2k2k2
ω2(7)
If we now take Eq. (6), insert Eqs. (4) and (7) and solve for the angular acceleration ˙
, we arrive
at the following
˙
=I1
v(Ma(,v)×Iv) + I1
v(McMr)
=F(,v) + 1
2G1ω2TsG2˙ωC()G3ω
(8)
where F(,v) = I1
v(Ma(,v)×Iv)are the forces independent of the actuators and G1,
G2,G3and C()are given by Eqs. (9), (10), (11) and (12) respectively. Note that the sample
time Tsof the quadrotor is introduced to ease future calculations.
G1= 2I1
v
bk1bk1bk1bk1
lk1lk1lk1lk1
k2k2k2k2
(9)
G2=I1
vT1
s
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
Irzz Irzz Irzz Irzz
(10)
G3=I1
v
Irzz Irzz Irzz Irzz
Irzz Irzz Irzz Irzz
0 0 0 0
(11)
7
C() =
y0 0
0x0
0 0 0
(12)
Note that traditionally in the literature, the system solved by INDI has the form of ˙x=f(x) +
g(x, u)where xis the state of the system and uthe input to the system. However, as becomes clear
from Eq. (8), the quadrotor is actually a system of the form ˙x=f(x) + g(x, u, ˙u). In Section III, a
solution to this type of problem will be shown.
III. Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion
Consider Eq. (8) from the previous section. This equation has some extra terms compared to
previous work [8], because the gyroscopic and angular momentum effects of the rotors are included.
We can apply a Taylor expansion to Eq. (8) and if we neglect higher order terms this results in Eq.
(13):
˙
=F(0,v0) + 1
2G1ω2
0+TsG2˙ω0C(0)G3ω0
+
(F(,v0) + C()G3ω0)|=0(0)
+
v(F(0,v))|v=v0(vv0)
+
ω(1
2G1ω2C(0)G3ω)|ω=ω0(ωω0)
+
˙ω(TsG2˙ω)|˙ω=˙ω0(˙ω˙ω0)
(13)
This equation predicts the angular acceleration after an infinitesimal timestep ahead in time based
on a change in angular rates of the vehicle and a change in rotational rate of the rotors. Now
observe that the first terms give the angular acceleration based on the current rates and inputs:
F(0,v0) + 1
2G1ω2
0+TsG2˙ω0C(0)G3ω0=˙
0. This angular acceleration can be obtained by
deriving it from the angular rates, which are measured with the gyroscope. In other words, these
terms are replaced by a sensor measurement, which is why INDI is also referred to as sensor based
control.
The second and third term, partial to and v, are assumed to be much smaller than the fourth
and fifth term, partial to ωand ˙ω. This is commonly referred to as the principle of time scale
8
separation [14]. This assumption only holds when the actuators are sufficiently fast and have more
effect compared to the change in aerodynamic and precession moments due to changes in angular
rates and body speeds. These assumptions and calculation of the partial derivatives gives Eq. (14):
˙
=˙
0+G1diag(ω0)(ωω0) + TsG2(˙ω˙ω0)C(0)G3(ωω0)(14)
Above it is stated that the angular acceleration is measured by deriving it from the angular rates.
In most cases, the gyroscope measurements from a MAV are noisy due to vibrations of the vehicle
due to the propellers and motors. Since differentiation of a noisy signal amplifies the noise, some
filtering is required. The use of a second order filter is adopted from the literature [9], of which a
transfer function in the Laplace domain is given by Eq. (15). Satisfactory results were obtained with
ωn= 50 rad/s and ζ= 0.55. Other low pass filters are also possible, for instance the Butterworth
filter.
H(s) = ω2
n
s2+ 2ζωns+ω2
n
(15)
The result is that instead of the current angular acceleration, a filtered and therefore delayed angular
acceleration ˙
fis measured. Since all the terms with the zero subscript in the Taylor expansion
should be at the same point in time, they are all replaced with the subscript f, yielding Eq. (16).
This indicates that these signals are also filtered and are therefore synchronous with the angular
acceleration.
˙
=˙
f+G1diag(ωf)(ωωf) + TsG2(˙ω˙ωf)C(f)G3(ωωf)(16)
This equation is not yet ready to be inverted, because it contains the derivative of the angular rate
of the propellers. Since we are dealing with discrete signals, consider the discrete approximation of
the derivative in the zdomain: ˙ω= (ωωz1)T1
s, where Tsis the sample time. This is shown in
Eq. (17):
˙
=˙
f+G1diag(ωf)(ωωf) + G2(ωωz1ωf+ωfz1)C(f)G3(ωωf)(17)
Collecting all terms with (ωωf)yields Eq. (18):
˙
=˙
f+ (G1diag(ωf) + G2C(f)G3)(ωωf)G2z1(ωωf)(18)
9
Inversion of this equation for ωyields Eq. (19), where +denotes the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse:
ωc=ωf+ (G1diag(ωf) + G2C(f)G3)+(ν˙
f+G2z1(ωcωf)) (19)
Note that the predicted angular acceleration ˙
is now instead a virtual control, denoted by ν. The
virtual control is the desired angular acceleration, and with Eq. (19), the required inputs ωccan be
calculated. The subscript cis added to ωto indicate that this is the command sent to the motors.
This input is given with respect to a previous input ωf. If we define the increment in the motor
commands as e
ω=ωcωf, it is clearly an incremental control law.
A. Parameter Estimation
Equation (19) shows the general quadrotor INDI control law. The parameters of this equation
are the three matrices G1,G2and G3which need to be identified for the specific quadrotor. This
can be done through measurement of each of the components that make up these matrices, including
the moments of inertia of the vehicle and the propellers as well as the thrust and drag coefficients
of the rotors. Identifying the parameters in this way requires a significant amount of effort.
A more effective method is to use test flight data to determine the model coefficients. Of course,
to do this the MAV needs to be flying. This can be achieved by initially tuning the parameters.
Alternatively, a different controller can be used at first to gather the test flight data, such as PID
control. Once a test flight has been logged, Eq. (18) is used for parameter estimation and is written
as Eq. (20). From this equation, a least squares solution is found for the matrices G1,G2and G3.
˙
f=G1G2C(f)G3
diag(ωf)∆ωf
(∆ωfz1ωf)
ωf
(20)
Here, denotes the finite difference between two subsequent samples. From the data, we can also
investigate the importance of some of the terms by comparing the least squares error with and
without the terms. It turns out that on a typical dataset, leaving out the matrix G3only results
in an estimation squared error increase of 0.2%. Furthermore, modeling the rotor as linear with
the rotational speed of the rotor instead of quadratic gives an estimation squared error increase of
10
0.9%. Therefore, we can simplify the INDI control law of Eq. (19) to Eq. (21):
ωc=ωf+ (G1+G2)+(ν˙
f+G2z1(ωcωf)) (21)
B. Implementation
With the simplifications described in subsection III A, the final INDI control scheme is shown
in Figure 2. The input to the system is the virtual control νand the output is the angular acceler-
ation of the system ˙
. The angular velocity measurement from the gyroscope is fed back through
the differentiating second order filter and subtracted from the virtual control to give the angular
acceleration error ˙
err.
Since the matrices G1and G2are not square, we take the pseudo inverse to solve the problem of
control allocation, denoted by +. The contents of the block ’MAV’ are shown in Figure 3, because
it allows the closed loop analysis in Section I II C. In this diagram, dis a disturbance term that
bundles disturbances and unmodeled dynamics.
+
+(G1+G2)++
H(z)
A(z)
1
z
MAV
Tsz
z1
1
z
G21
z
H(z)
z1
Tsz
ν˙
err
e
ωωc
ωfω
d
0
f
˙
f
˙
System
Fig. 2 INDI control scheme. A(z)denotes the actuator dynamics and H(z)is the second order
filter.
1z1G1+
z1
zG2
1
1z1+
ωω
d
˙
˙
Fig. 3 The contents of the block named ’MAV’ in Figure 2.
Note that Eq. (21) provides a desired angular velocity of the rotors. However, the actuators
11
do not have an instantaneous response. Instead, it is assumed they have first order dynamics A(z).
The reference sent to the motors is denoted by ωcand e
ω=ωcωf. In Figure 2, it is assumed
that actuator feedback is available. However, if this is not the case, the actuator state ω0has to be
estimated with a model of the actuator dynamics as is shown in Figure 4. Here A(z)is a model of
the actuator dynamics.
+
H(z)
A(z)
1
zA(z)
e
ωωc
ω
ωf
ω
ω0
Fig. 4 Block diagram for estimation of actuator state if actuator feedback is not available.
C. Closed Loop Analysis
Consider the control diagram shown in Figure 2. We can verify that this is a stable controller by
doing a closed loop analysis. First, the transfer function of each of the two small loops is calculated,
shown by Eq. (22) and (23). Here TFxydenotes the transfer function from point x to y in the
control diagram.
e
ω= (G1+G2)+˙
err + (G1+G2)+G2z1e
ω
(G1+G2)e
ω=˙
err +G2z1e
ω
(G1+G2G2z1)e
ω=˙
err
TF ˙
erre
ω(z) = (G1+G2G2z1)+
(22)
We define H(z) = IH(z)and assume that all actuators have the same dynamics, so A(z) = IA(z).
This means that each matrix in TFe
ωω(z)is a diagonal matrix and therefore TFe
ωω(z)is a
diagonal matrix function.
TFe
ωω(z) = (IA(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)
= (IIA(z)IH(z)z1)1IA(z)
= (I(1 A(z)H(z)z1))1IA(z)
=I(1 A(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)
(23)
12
Then, the last part of the open loop is from ωto ˙
, as shown by Figure 3. Using this figure, the
transfer function is calculated in Eq. (24). Note that for this analysis, disturbances are not taken
into account.
TFω˙
(z) = G1+z1
zG2=G1+G2G2z1(24)
Using these intermediate results, the open loop transfer function of the entire system is shown in
Eq. (25):
TF ˙
err˙
(z) = TFω˙
(z)TFe
ωω(z)TF ˙
erre
ω(z)
= (G1+G2G2z1)I(1 A(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)(G1+G2G2z1)+
=I(1 A(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)
(25)
Using Eq. (25) and Figure 2, we can calculate the closed loop transfer function of the entire system
in Eq. (26):
TFν˙
(z) = (I+TF ˙
err˙
(z)IH(z)z1)1TF ˙
err˙
(z)
= (I+I(1 A(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)IH(z)z1)1I(1 A(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)
=I(1A(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)
1+(1A(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)H(z)z1
=IA(z)
1A(z)H(z)z1+A(z)H(z)z1
=IA(z)
(26)
From this equation, it appears that the closed loop transfer function from the virtual input to the
angular acceleration is in fact the actuator dynamics A(z). In most cases, the actuator dynamics can
be represented by first or second order dynamics. Note that this shows the importance of applying
the H(z)filter on the input as well. By doing this, a lot of terms cancel and all that remains is the
actuator dynamics.
Now, consider the transfer function from disturbances d(see Figure 2) to the angular accelera-
tion. The derivation is given in Eq. (27) in which use is made of Eq. (25).
TFd˙
(z) = (ITF ˙
err˙
(z)(1)H(z)z1)1I
= (I+I(1 A(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)IH(z)z1)1I
=I1
1+(1A(z)H(z)z1)1A(z)H(z)z1
=I1A(z)H(z)z1
1A(z)H(z)z1+A(z)H(z)z1
=I(1 A(z)H(z)z1)
(27)
13
With Eq. (27) we show that disturbances in the angular acceleration are rejected as long as the
actuator dynamics and the designed filter are stable. The term A(z)H(z)z1will go to 1 over time,
with a response determined by the actuator dynamics, filter dynamics and a unit delay. This means
that the faster the angular acceleration is measured, the faster the drone can respond and the faster
the actuators can react, the faster the disturbance is neutralized.
D. Attitude Control
The angular acceleration of the MAV is accurately controlled by the system shown in Figure 2.
To control the attitude of the MAV, a stabilizing angular acceleration reference needs to be passed
to the INDI controller. This outer loop controller can be as simple as a Proportional Derivative
(PD) controller (a gain on the rate error and a gain on the angle error), as shown in Figure 5. Here,
ηrepresents the attitude of the quadcopter. The benefit of the INDI inner loop controller is that
the outer PD controller commands a reference, independent of the effectiveness of the actuators
(including the inertia of the quadrotor).
This means that the design of this controller depends only on the speed of the actuator dynamics
A(z). In case the actuator dynamics are known (through analysis of logged test flights for instance),
a value of Kηand Kcan be determined that give a stable response.
This outer loop controller does not involve inversion of the attitude kinematics as has been done
in other work [3]. However, the attitude angles for a quadrotor are generally small, in which case
the inversion of the attitude kinematics can be replaced with simple angle feedback.
+
Kη+
KA(z)Tsz
z1
Tsz
z1
ηref ref ˙
η
INDI
Fig. 5 The design of the attitude controller based on the closed loop response of the INDI
controller.
14
E. Altitude Control
The INDI controller derived in the beginning of this section controls the angular acceleration
around the axes x,yand z, which corresponds to roll, pitch and yaw. However, there is a fourth
degree of freedom that is controlled with the rotors, which is the acceleration along the z-axis.
Control of this fourth axis is handled by a separate controller. This controller scales the average
input to the motors to a value commanded by the pilot, after the input has been incremented by
the INDI controller.
IV. Adaptive INDI
The INDI approach only relies on modeling of the actuators. The control effectiveness depends
on the moment of inertia of the vehicle, the type of motors and propellers. A change in any of these
will require re-estimation of the control effectiveness. Moreover, the control effectiveness can even
change during flight, due to a change in flight velocity, battery voltage or actuator failure.
To counteract these problems and obtain a controller that requires no manual parameter es-
timation, the controller was extended with onboard adaptive parameter estimation using a Least
Mean Squares (LMS) [15] adaptive filter. This filter is often used in adaptive signal filtering and
adaptive neural networks.
The LMS implementation is shown in Eq. (28), where µ1is a diagonal matrix whose elements
are the adaptation constant for each input and µ2is a diagonal matrix to adjust the adaptation
constants per axis. This is necessary as not all axes have the same signal to noise ratio.
The LMS formula calculates the difference between the expected acceleration based on the
inputs and the measured acceleration. Then it increments the control effectiveness based on the
error. The control effectiveness includes both G1as well as G2, as is shown in Eq. (29). Clearly,
when there is no change in input, the control effectiveness is not changed. The reverse is also
true: more excitation of the system will result in a faster adaptation. This is a benefit of the LMS
algorithm over, for instance, recursive least squares with a finite horizon because recursive least
15
squares will ’forget’ everything outside the horizon.
G(k) = G(k1) µ2
G(k1)
ωf
˙
ωf
˙
f
ωf
˙
ωf
T
µ1(28)
G=G1G2(29)
Note that the filtering can be different for the online parameter estimation than for the actual
control. Equation (28) makes use of ˙
f, which is the finite difference of ˙
fin the control Eq.
(21). Since differentiating amplifies high frequencies, a filter that provides more attenuation of these
high frequencies is necessary. We still use the second order filter described by Eq. (15), but with
ωn= 25 rad/s and ζ= 0.55.
When an approximate control effectiveness is given before takeoff, the adaptive system will
estimate the actual values online, and thereby tune itself. The only knowledge provided to the
controller is an initial guess of the control effectiveness. It is generally not possible to take off
without any estimate of the control effectiveness, because the UAV might crash before the adaptive
system has converged.
The choice of the adaptation constants µ1and µ2determines the stability and the rate of
adaptation. By making these constants larger, a faster convergence is achieved. By making them
too large, the adaptation will no longer be stable. The theoretical limit has been discussed in the
literature [15] and it depends on the autocorrelation matrix of the input to the filter. In practice,
the filter stability deteriorates before the theoretical limit, so in order to find a good adaptation
constant some tuning is required.
V. Experimental Setup
To validate the performance of the INDI controller developed in Section III and the adaptive
parameter estimation from Section IV, several experiments were conducted. These experiments were
performed using the Bebop quadcopter from Parrot shown in Figure 1. The Bebop weighs 396.2
grams and can be equipped with bumpers, which are 12 grams per bumper. For these experiments,
the bumpers where not equipped unless explicitly stated. The quadcopter was running the Paparazzi
16
open source autopilot software, which contains all the code for wireless communication, reading
sensor measurements etc. The accelerometer, gyroscope and control loops were running at 512 Hz.
Four experiments test the key properties of the controller:
• Performance
• Disturbance rejection
• Adaptation
During these experiments, the reference attitude and average thrust level were controlled by
a pilot and sent to the drone over WiFi. All other computations were done on the drone itself,
including the online adaptation.
A. Performance
In order to put the responsiveness of the system to the test and make sure that the angular
acceleration reference is tracked by the INDI controller, a doublet input was applied on the attitude
roll angle. The amplitude of the doublet is 30 degrees and the period is half a second (0.25 seconds
positive and 0.25 seconds negative). This test is only done for the roll and not for the pitch,
because there is no fundamental difference between these axes. The yaw axis is covered separately
in experiment V D. Note that this experiment is performed without the adaptation.
The performance is compared to a manually tuned PID controller. The INDI controller is not
expected to be faster or slower than a traditional PID controller, because the result of Eq. (26)
shows that the response of the INDI inner loop is simply the actuator dynamics. Considering that
the outer loop is a PD controller, the rise time and overshoot should be similar.
Finally, this test will also be performed with an INDI controller that does not contain the filter
delay compensation, so by using ω0in the controller increment instead of ωf. It is expected that
this will not fly well, because in Section III C we showed that with this compensation all terms
cancel and the closed loop transfer function reduces to IA(z).
By inspection of Figure 2, we can get a feel for what will happen if we omit this filter compen-
sation. When there is an angular acceleration error, a control increment e
ωwill be the result, which
17
is added to ω0to produce ωc.ωcgoes through the actuator dynamics to produce the new ω. The
next time step, the result of this new ωdoes not yet appear in ˙
f, because it is filtered and therefore
delayed. Therefore, e
ωwill be the same. However, ω0did update, so ωcwill be incremented even
more, while we are still waiting to see the result of the first increment in ˙
f.
B. Disturbance Rejection
The disturbance rejection property is validated by adding a disturbance to the system. One
possibility would be to apply aerodynamic disturbances by flying in the wake of a big fan. The
disturbances occuring would be realistic, but not very repeatable. Moreover, the magnitude of the
disturbance would be unknown.
Instead, it is possible to apply a disturbance in the form of a step function to the system. This
is done by adding a weight of 42.5 grams to a container located in an off-centered position on the
quadrotor while it is flying, as shown in Figure 6. The container is located on the front of the drone
and has a distance of about 11 cm to the center of gravity, so any weight added will shift the center
of gravity forward. This will cause a misalignment of the thrust vector with respect to the center of
gravity and therefore a pitch moment. This moment will be persistent and therefore have the form
of a step disturbance. This is indicated with din Figure 2. Although this moment is created with a
center of gravity shift, the situation is the same as in the case of a persistent gust or an unmodeled
aerodynamic moment.
Fig. 6 The container attached to the nose of the quadrotor with one weight inside.
A normal PID controller would respond to such a disturbance very slowly, because it takes time
for the integrator to accumulate. But the introduction of the INDI inner loop leads to a cascaded
control structure, which is much more resistant to disturbances than a single loop design [16].
18
Fig. 7 The Bebop quadrotor with bumpers.
Because of this, the reference pitch angle is expected to be tracked shortly after the disturbance.
C. Adaptation
The Bebop quadcopter has the possibility to fly with bumpers, as is shown in Figure 7. Though
these bumpers only weigh 12 grams a piece, they are located far from the center of gravity and
therefore increase the moment of inertia. Furthermore, they can influence the airflow around the
propellers. These system changes affect the G1and G2matrices. Therefore, the adaptive algorithm
from Section IV should deal with adding or removing the bumpers.
First, two flights are performed to show the effect of adding or removing the bumpers when
the adaptive algorithm is not active. For the first flight, the bumpers are added, while the G1and
G2matrices correspond to the quadrotor without bumpers. For the second flight, the bumpers are
removed and the Gmatrices from the quadrotor with bumpers are used. In both flights, doublets
are performed like in Section V A. The performance is expected to degrade compared to the previous
results for both cases, as the Gmatrices do not correspond to what they should be.
Second, the ability of the quadrotor to adapt its G1and G2matrices is tested. In this ex-
periment, the drone starts with bumpers equipped, but with system matrices that represent the
configuration without bumpers. The pilot flies the drone in a confined area while performing some
pitch, roll and yaw maneuvers to excite the system. While flying, the correct matrices should be
estimated. Then, the Bebop is landed and the bumpers are removed. After take off, the matrices
should converge to their original state.
Finally, doublets are performed with and without the bumpers equipped, while the adaptation
algorithm is active. We expect the same performance as in Section V A.
19
D. Yaw Control
The purpose of this experiment is to show the improvement in yaw performance due to the
incorporation of the rotor spin-up torque in the controller design. This is done by applying a
doublet input on the yaw setpoint. The amplitude of the doublet is 5 degrees and the period is one
second (0.5 seconds positive and 0.5 seconds negative). As a comparison, the same experiment is
performed with a traditional PID controller. This PID controller is manually tuned to give a fast
rise time with minimal overshoot.
Additionally, the same test is performed with a zero G2matrix. Here we expect an oscillation,
because the persistent effect of a change in rotor angular velocity on the yaw axis is small. We take
the pseudoinverse in Eq. 21, so the resulting gain will be very large. Because there is the angular
momentum effect of the propellers, the initial angular acceleration will be larger than expected, and
the controller will start to oscillate.
VI. Results
This section deals with the results of the experiments described in Section V. The angular
acceleration shown in the plots in this section is not the onboard estimate of the angular acceleration,
because it is delayed through filtering. Instead, it is computed after the experiment from the finite
difference of the gyroscope data. The signal is filtered with a fourth order Butterworth filter with
a cutoff frequency of 15 Hz. It is filtered twice, forward and reverse, resulting in a zero phase
(non-causal) filter. For the actual control, the onboard filtered (and delayed) angular acceleration
was used.
A. Performance
Figure 8 shows the angular acceleration around the xaxis denoted by ˙pand the reference angular
acceleration denoted by ˙pref . Additionally, the reference is filtered with the actuator dynamics,
resulting in ˙pref A. This signal is the angular acceleration that is expected based on the calculations
in Section III C, specifically Eq. (26). It might seem that the controller does not track the reference
well because it lags behind the reference, but this was expected based on the model of the actuator
dynamics. The angular acceleration is actually very close to the expected angular acceleration ˙pref A.
20
Finally, we also show the angular acceleration as calculated on board the quadrotor using the second
order filter. The filtered angular acceleration on board the quadrotor is significantly delayed with
respect to the actual angular acceleration, which is why we will run into problems if we don’t take
this delay into account in the INDI controller.
Time [s]
˙
[ deg.s2]
˙pref
˙p
˙prefA
˙ponboard
8.2 8.4 8.6 8.8 9 9.2
-500
-400
-300
-200
-100
0
100
200
300
Fig. 8 Angular acceleration in the roll axis during doublet input.
The outer loop controller, which generates the angular acceleration reference to track, was
designed such that the resultant accelerations give a desired response of the roll angle, shown in
Figure 9. From this figure, it can be seen that the quadcopter reaches its reference roll angle within
0.2 seconds with a very small overshoot.
Time [s]
Roll angle [deg]
φref
φ
8.2 8.4 8.6 8.8 9 9.2
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
40
Fig. 9 The roll angle during the doublet for the INDI controller.
The roll angle response of the PID controller is shown in Figure 10. As expected, the PID
controller performs very similar to the INDI controller in terms of rise time and overshoot. The
21
integral gain included in the PID controller, which needs to eliminate steady state offsets, degrades
the dynamic performance of the closed loop system. This shows that the INDI controller marginally
improves the performance of a traditional PID controller in terms of responsiveness for the roll.
Time [s]
Roll angle [deg]
φref
φ
10.4 10.6 10.8 11 11.2 11.4
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
40
Fig. 10 The roll angle during the doublet for the PID controller.
As discussed above, the onboard filtered measurement of the angular acceleration is significantly
delayed. If we remove the filter delay compensation from the INDI controller, the quadrotor was
severely oscillating, as can be seen in Figure 11. The doublet was not performed as this did not
seem safe. The oscillation might be reduced by lowering Kηand K, but this will make the response
slower as well. From this figure, we can conclude that the filter delay compensation is an important
part of the INDI controller and is crucial in obtaining good performance with an INDI controller.
Time [s]
Roll angle [deg]
φref
φ
13 13.5 14 14.5 15 15.5 16
-20
-15
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
20
Fig. 11 The roll angle for the INDI controller without filter compensation.
22
B. Disturbance Rejection
The weight, shown in Figure 6, was placed in the container attached to the nose of the quadrotor
by hand. The weight was placed in the container gently, but it probably arrived in the container
with some small velocity. The disturbance in the angular acceleration is therefore a combination of
a step and a delta pulse.
Figure 12 shows the angular acceleration that is the result of the disturbance. From the figure,
it is clear that the disturbance happened just after 13 seconds. As the angular acceleration increases
in the negative direction, the reference angular acceleration starts to go the opposite way, because
now an angular rate and a pitch angle error start to arise. About 0.1 seconds after losing track
of the reference, the angular acceleration again coincides with the expected angular acceleration,
having overcome the disturbance in the angular acceleration.
Time [s]
˙
[ deg.s2]
˙qref
˙q
˙qrefA
12.6 12.8 13 13.2 13.4 13.6 13.8
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
80
100
Fig. 12 The angular acceleration during the disturbance.
This results in a pitch angle with no steady state error as can be seen from Figure 13. After
0.3 seconds, the pitch angle is back at zero. To show that the weight in the container really is
a step disturbance, which can be compared to a constant aerodynamic moment, consider Figure
14. It shows the difference of the rotational rate of the front and rear motors divided by four:
(ω1+ω2ω3ω4)/4. This indicates the average magnitude in Rounds Per Minute (RPM) that
each motor contributes to the pitch control (see Eq. (7)). Clearly, there is a difference before and
after the disturbance which can be quantified as an average change of 578 RPM over the interval
[12.6 13.0] versus [13.4 13.8]. This demonstrates that the disturbance was really a step and that the
23
Time [s]
Pitch angle [deg]
θref
θ
12.6 12.8 13 13.2 13.4 13.6 13.8
-3.5
-3
-2.5
-2
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
Fig. 13 The pitch angle during the disturbance.
INDI controller can rapidly cope with such a disturbance.
Time [s]
(ω1+ω2ω3ω4)/4[RPM]
12.6 12.8 13 13.2 13.4 13.6 13.8
-500
0
500
1000
1500
2000
Fig. 14 The difference between the rotational rate of the front motors and the rear motors.
Figure 15 shows the same experiment performed with a PID controller. Of course, the weight
was not dropped in exactly the same manner and with the same velocity, so the initial disturbance
was probably different. However, the persisting disturbance is the same, because the weight has
exactly the same mass. It takes about 1.5 seconds before the pitch angle is back at zero again,
which is approximately 5 times longer than for the INDI controller. One might say that the integral
gain of the PID controller should be larger, but this will deteriorate the performance in the previous
experiment.
24
Time [s]
Pitch angle [deg]
θref
θ
15 15.5 16 16.5 17 17.5
-6
-5
-4
-3
-2
-1
0
1
Fig. 15 The pitch angle during the disturbance for the PID controller.
C. Adaptation
Figures 16 and 17 show the response to a roll doublet without adaptation if there is a mismatch
in the control effectiveness. Even though the bumpers are lightweight, their effect is significant
because they are located far from the center of gravity. In Figure 16, we see what happens if the
actuators are less effective than in the model, because the inertia is higher. Additional increments
of the input are needed to reach a desired angular acceleration. The oscillation occurs because this
takes more time. The oscillation can be reduced by reducing the Kηand Kωgains, at the cost of
having a slower response.
Time [s]
Roll angle [deg]
φref
φ
27.4 27.6 27.8 28 28.2 28.4 28.6
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
Fig. 16 Flight without adaptation, with bumpers equipped, while the control effectiveness has
been determined without bumpers
In Figure 17, we see the opposite: the control effectiveness is higher than what was modeled.
This results in a fast oscillation, which cannot be removed by reducing the attitude gains. This is
25
because the cause of the oscillation is different: now too much input is applied to reach a certain
angular acceleration. This will happen regardless of what angular acceleration is requested by the
attitude controller.
Time [s]
Roll angle [deg]
φref
φ
18.4 18.6 18.8 19 19.2 19.4 19.6
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
40
Fig. 17 Flight without adaptation, without bumpers equipped, while the control effectiveness
has been determined with bumpers
We can conclude that the performance degrades when the modeled control effectiveness does not
closely correspond to the actual control effectiveness. When the adaptation algorithm is enabled,
Figures 18 through 20 show how each row of the G1matrix evolves over time as a result of the
second experiment described in section V C. The same is shown in Figure 21 for the third row of
the G2matrix. Each line represents one of the elements of that row, indicating the effectiveness of
that motor on the specified axis.
Note that the drone is flying in the interval of [8 54] seconds and again in [66 125] seconds; in
between these times, the drone is landed and the bumpers are removed. This is indicated by vertical
lines in the figures. A large change in effectiveness due to the addition and removal of the bumpers
can be seen in the third row of the G1matrix, shown in Figure 20, which corresponds to the yaw.
Also in Figure 18 a change in effectiveness can be seen between the flights with and without
bumpers. Once converged, the effectiveness values are stable with little noise. Upon take-off and
landing the effectiveness seems to diverge for a short period of time. This is not a failure of the
adaptation algorithm, but merely the result of the interaction with the floor.
The controller is engaged once the pilot gives a thrust command that exceeds idle thrust. At
26
Time [s]
G1
M1
M2
M3
M4
0 50 100 150
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
Fig. 18 The first row of the G1matrix corresponding to the roll.
Time [s]
G1
M1
M2
M3
M4
0 50 100 150
-20
-15
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
20
Fig. 19 The second row of the G1matrix corresponding to the pitch.
that point, the quadrotor does not produce enough lift to take off, so it is still standing on the
floor. When the INDI controller tries to attain certain angular accelerations, the quadrotor does
not rotate and the adaptation algorithm will adapt to this. When landing, these interactions with
the floor can also occur.
Notice the large difference in effectiveness between the actuators in the second part of the flight
in Figure 20. This illustrates the added value of adaptive INDI, as often the actuators are assumed to
perform equal to each other, while in this case they do not. These differences between the actuators
are also observed with the estimation metho d describ ed in subsection III A for multiple flights. The
differences may be caused by small imperfections that are not clearly visible on some of the rotors.
Finally, we can observe how the online parameter estimation affects the response to a roll doublet
in Figures 22 and 23. Regardless of whether the bumpers are equipped or not or with what control
27
Time [s]
G1
M1
M2
M3
M4
0 50 100 150
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
Fig. 20 The third row of the G1matrix corresponding to the yaw.
Time [s]
G2
M1
M2
M3
M4
0 50 100 150
-100
-50
0
50
100
Fig. 21 The third row of the G2matrix corresponding to the yaw.
effectiveness model the quadrotor starts flying, the same performance is achieved as in Section V A.
This shows the robustness of the adaptive algorithm against control effectiveness changes.
D. Yaw control
Finally, consider Figure 24. It shows for each timestep the change in angular acceleration in
the yaw axis, ∆ ˙r, during the large control inputs discussed above. A careful reader up until this
point may wonder: ’Is the rotor spin-up torque really significant? Can we not omit the G2matrix?’.
The figure shows the predicted change in angular acceleration based on the change in motor speeds
according to Eq. (21), which is a close match. In green, the figure shows the predicted change in
angular acceleration if we neglect G2, denoted by ∆ ˙rsimple . Clearly, the motor spin-up torque is
very significant.
28
Time [s]
Roll angle [deg]
φref
φ
24.2 24.4 24.6 24.8 25 25.2 25.4
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
40
Fig. 22 Flight with adaptation, with bumpers equipped, while the control effectiveness has
been determined without bumpers
Time [s]
Roll angle [deg]
φref
φ
24.2 24.4 24.6 24.8 25 25.2 25.4
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
40
Fig. 23 Flight with adaptation, without bumpers equipped, while the control effectiveness has
been determined with bumpers
Time [s]
˙
[ deg.s2]
∆ ˙r
∆ ˙rest
∆ ˙rsimple
24 24.5 25 25.5 26
-0.6
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Fig. 24 The change in angular acceleration in the yaw axis along with the predicted change.
29
Moreover, if we try to fly with a zero G2matrix, the resulting oscillation is so strong that a
takeoff is not possible. In order to fly without this matrix, we cannot use the estimated values for
the control effectiveness in the yaw axis. Instead, we can take a higher effectiveness for the model
parameters than in reality in order to avoid overshooting the reference angular acceleration due to
the rotor spin-up torque that is now not taken into account. Figure 25 shows that it is possible to
fly with a zero G2matrix, at the cost of a severe performance penalty.
Time [s]
Yaw angle [deg]
ψref
ψ
23.5 24 24.5 25 25.5
115
120
125
130
Fig. 25 The yaw angle during the doublet for the INDI controller without G2matrix.
If we do take the rotor angular momentum into account, Figure 26 shows the resultant doublet
response of the yaw angle. Compare this with Figure 27, which shows the doublet response for the
PID controller. The INDI controller clearly has a faster rise time and less overshoot.
Time [s]
Yaw angle [deg]
ψref
ψ
24 24.5 25 25.5 26
86
88
90
92
94
96
98
Fig. 26 The yaw angle during the doublet for the INDI controller.
30
Time [s]
Yaw angle [deg]
ψref
ψ
12.5 13 13.5 14 14.5 15
118
120
122
124
126
128
130
132
Fig. 27 The yaw angle during the doublet for the PID controller.
VII. Conclusion
Adaptive Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion is a very promising technique for control
of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAV). Due to incorporation of the spin-up torque, fast yaw control is
possible, which is typically very slow on a quadrotor. The disturbance rejection capabilities are
vital when flying in windy conditions or with MAVs that have complex aerodynamics. Because
unmodeled aerodynamic moments are measured with the angular acceleration, no complex aerody-
namic modeling is needed. Even the control effectiveness matrices are shown to be adapted online,
resulting in a controller that can handle changes in the MAV configuration and needs little effort to
set up on a new platform. Only when a high performance outer loop is required is some knowledge
of the actuator dynamics needed. These properties result in a very flexible and powerful controller.
Acknowledgments
This work was financed by the Delphi Consortium. The authors would like to thank Bart Remes
and the MAVLab for their support.
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bebop_indi_experiment
33
... However, this approach amplifies noise as the sample time decreases, reducing accuracy. Alternatively, first-or second-order low-pass filters can be used, as discussed by Smeur, Chu, and Croon [15] and Steffensen, Steinert, and Holzapfel [16], who combined this with incremental dynamics-based controllers and gain scheduling. In this research, a first-order low-pass filter is used to obtain the derivative of the body rate. ...
... x 0 has to be estimated to apply the control input in Equation (15). The estimated state derivative is .x ...
... The stability proof is based on the general state derivative form in Equation (6) and control input in Equation (15). For stability proof, the following assumptions are defined: Assumption 1. ...
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A flight controller formulation based on incremental nonlinear dynamics inversion (INDI) control with nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO) is proposed. INDI control is a nonlinear controller based on incremental dynamics. Aimed to attain robustness for nonlinear dynamics inversion (NDI)-based controller, incremental dynamics are derived using the first-order Talyor series expansion to nonlinear systems. The incremental dynamics-based controller requires information on state derivative terms to strengthen the robustness property of the nonlinear controller. The proposed controller utilizes the first-order low-pass filter to obtain the state derivative estimate to implement incremental dynamics into the system. Because the incremental form creates uncertainty term which is an aftermath of the Taylor series expansion, the proposed controller adopts the NDO to eliminate this effect. The controller is applied to the generic transport model which was developed by NASA for simulation purposes. The proposed NDO-based INDI control underwent simulations, together with an INDI controller without disturbance observer, and showed that the developed method results in better performances, providing important advantages where it compensates the uncertainties, removes the steady-state error, and shows less oscillating longitudinal body rate response than the baseline controller, desirable for aerodynamics applications with faster system response.
... A baseline incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) attitude and vertical load factor controller is designed to perform the control task of the system. The performance of INDI controllers has been extensively discussed [30][31][32][33][34]. In Refs. ...
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In this paper, we present a method to optimize the attainable moment set (AMS) to increase the control authority for electrical vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOLs). As opposed to 3D AMSs for conventional airplanes, the hover control of eVTOLs requires vertical thrust produced by the powered lift system in addition to three moments. The limits of the moments and vertical thrust are coupled due to input saturation, and, as a result, the concept of the traditional AMS is extended to the 4D generalized moment set to account for this coupling effect. Given a required moment set (RMS) derived from system requirements, the optimization is formulated as a 4D convex polytope coverage problem, i.e., the AMS coverage over the RMS, such that the system’s available control authority is maximized to fulfill the prescribed requirements. The optimization accounts for not only nominal flight, but also for one critical engine inoperative situation. To test the method, it is applied to an eVTOL with eight rotors to optimize for the rotors’ orientation with respect to the body axis. The results indicate highly improved coverage of the RMS for both failure-free and one-engine-inoperative situations. Closed-loop simulation tests are performed for both optimal and non-optimal configurations to further validate the results.
... Contrary to static robust controllers, the adaptive control techniques are founded on the notion of parameter estimation and a suitable control update law which adapts to changing dynamics. This complex task may be realized through methods such as Adaptive Dynamic Inversion (ADI) [106], Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) [12], L 1 adaptive control [45], or through some form of adaptive neural network. Neural networks are often utilized in MRAC to model system nonlinearities. ...
Thesis
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The popularity of state-of-the-art machine learning and optimization techniques is currently accelerated by the advancements in computational power and miniaturization of embedded computers. In many industrial applications, the use of machine learning and optimization techniques now becomes a viable and preferred option. Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) techniques are critical for enabling both aerial and ground vehicle autonomy. The development of GNC algorithms primarily relies on a model-based design using the first principle approach, which leads to explainable and verifiable solutions. The increasing requirements and dynamically changing environments challenge the current state-of-the-art GNC approaches and promote the use of data-driven and adaptive systems. An associated challenge is the integration into safety-critical applications, which requires the development of protecting mechanisms as well as conducting verification and validation procedures. The goal of this thesis is to design, implement, and test a GNC system for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle modified for aerial grasping missions while incorporating optimal control and machine learning components, enabling the creation of a robust, explainable, and safe control. A statistics-based approach utilizing surrogate modeling techniques is proposed for the system’s safety validation, treating the system as a black-box. The subsequent evaluation of the system’s failure probability is paramount for real-world integration endeavors requiring certification by respective regulation authorities.
... Different approaches exist to provide closed-loop control with a focus on high robustness against modelling discrepancies. Experiments on rotarywing 50 and flying wing 51 UAVs using incremental non-linear dynamic inversion (INDI) show high-performance nonlinear control with strong robustness to modelling inaccuracies. Although a suitable candidate at first glance, it relies on acceleration measurements, which, in the case of AIDs, are altered by the movement of their inertia-heavy control surfaces (Supplementary Notes 2). ...
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... A baseline incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) attitude and vertical load factor controller is designed to perform the control task of the system. The performance of INDI controllers has been extensively discussed [29][30][31][32][33]. For the control allocation, redistributed pseudo inverse (RPI) method [34] is used to handle redundancy and reallocate pseudo controls command once saturation occurs. ...
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In this paper, we present a method to optimize the attainable moment set (AMS) to increase control authority for electrical vertical-take-off-landing vehicles (eVTOLs). As opposed to 3D AMS for conventional airplanes, hover control of eVTOLs requires vertical thrust produced by the powered lift system in addition to three moments. The limits of the moments and vertical thrust are coupled due to input saturation, and as a result, the concept of traditional AMS is extended to 4D Generalized Moment Set to account for this coupling effect. Given a required moment set (RMS) derived from system requirements, the optimization is formulated as a 4D convex polytope coverage problem, i.e., the AMS coverage over the RMS, such that the system's available control authority is maximized to fulfill the prescribed requirements. The optimization accounts for not only nominal flight, but also for one critical engine inoperative situation. To test the method, it is applied to an eVTOL with 8 rotors to optimize for the rotors’ orientation w.r.t the body axis. Results indicate highly improved coverage of the RMS for both failure-free and one engine inoperative situations. Closed-loop simulation tests are performed for both optimal and non-optimal configurations to further validate the results.
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To be effective as an engineer practicing in the field of process automation requires a breadth of knowledge across a wide range of disciplines: chemical engineering, instrumentation, electrical engineering, control theory, mathematics, computing and management. Previously published books exist in these areas but most are generic and, of those that are applied in nature, few are oriented towards the actual needs of the chemical and process industry. It is impractical for engineers and unreasonable for students to have to cope with this spectrum of material and lack of emphasis. The objective of Process Automation Handbook has been to distil into a single coherent handbook all the essentials of process automation at a depth sufficient for most practical purposes. The handbook focuses on the knowledge needed to cope with the vast majority of process control and automation situations. In doing so, a number of sensible balances have been carefully struck between breadth and depth, theory and practice, classical and modern, technology and technique, information and understanding. A thorough grounding is provided for every topic. If more detailed information is required, the reader is referred to more specialised texts in the knowledge that he or she has been provided with a sound platform to ask the right questions and understand the answers. Process Automation Handbook will be of value to any engineer actively concerned with process control and automation in the chemical and process industries and final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students studying process control.
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