Application of the Improved Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion in Fixed-Wing UAV Flight Tests
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 35, Issue 6
Abstract
Incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion shows good robustness and low dependence on the model information. In this study, incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion is improved and utilized to solve the six-degrees-of-freedom waypoint tracking problem of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This research is focused on studying the acquisition of the state derivatives and the processing method of the derivative time delay. A nondelay differentiator design method and an incremental gain method that responds to time delay are developed in this study. Additionally, a universal waypoint navigation method based on incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion is put forward to enable the aircraft to successfully reach its waypoint from any spatial position and under any motion states. Finally, the proposed improvements of the incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion are verified through flight tests.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available in a repository online in accordance with funder data retention policies. The program for improved INDI controller used in flight tests can be downloaded from GitHub (Liu 2020).
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 11872230, 91852108, and 92052203.
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Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 35 • Issue 6 • November 2022
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 23, 2021
Accepted: Jun 30, 2022
Published online: Aug 29, 2022
Published in print: Nov 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Jan 29, 2023
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