System Identification of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Hingeless Control Effectors

This paper presents research conducted for system identifiation of an unmanned aerial vehicle to quantitatively compare control authority of conventional ailerons and jet actuators in lateral/directional motion. Locally linear state-space models were identiffed, via the Observer/Kalman lter algorithm, to reveal the dynamics of the unmanned aerial vehicle test-bed for different roll control effector configurations. The accuracy of the generated models is demonstrated by examination of residual error between the recorded flight states and the identified state-space model output using the recorded pilot inputs. Linear systems theory is used to (1) identify correct linearized model order for minimal realization of the equations of motion, (2) verify consistent plant dynamics across roll effector configurations, and (3) quantitatively assess roll effector authority across the configurations. The identiffed system models yield a quantitative comparison of control effectiveness of conventional and proposed aileron actuators which align with pilot feedback and test observations. 2010 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.

System Identification of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Hingeless Control Effectors Conference Paper