(2017 i`na 22) f"ryz ,xii`a e''k
Title:
Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Challenges in Controller Design
Speaker:
Kimon P. Valavanis
,aia` xhqnq
University of Denver
Time:
Monday, May 22, 2017, 15:30 Refreshments will be served before the seminar
Place:
Room 217, D. Dan and Betty Kahn Bld, Technion
Abstract: Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) research and development (R&D) witnesses unprecedented levels of growth. Projections and expectations for their future utilization, beyond the obvious military applications, span a very wide spectrum of civilian/public domain applications, from emergency response, environmental monitoring, early fire detection and forest protection, to name but a few such applications. However, before timely and orderly integration into civilian airspace it is essential that R&D, at least in the areas of design for autonomy, navigation, robust and faulttolerant control, sense-detect-and-avoid/see-and-avoid systems for mid-air collision avoidance, UAV safety and reliability, reaches maturity with proven performance guarantees. The objective of this talk is twofold: i.) It first provides a comprehensive approach to designing navigation controllers for unmanned rotorcraft, including a modular architecture that aims to facilitate software developments regardless of specific hardware. Controller designs may be nonlinear, linearized and/or linear, and include an emergency module to accommodate in real-time rotorcraft main/tail rotor failures resulting in helicopter safe landing. ii.) Moving forward, and considering that Personal Air Vehicles (PAVs) is not an unthinkable goal, an integrated methodology to build and test Circulation Control (CC) Based fixed-wing UAVs, UC2AVs (taking advantage of the Coanda effect) is presented along with design details of a novel, robust nonlinear controller that takes into account how CC affects lift and aerodynamic coefficients and characteristics. This type of aircraft is shown to have enhanced performance, reduced take-off runway, delayed stall and increased payload during cruise flight. Experimental results and real flight tests demonstrate applicability and usability of the proposed frameworks.
