Flight Control Systems for a station keeping hovering UAV

Bill Pisano March 16, 2005

Project Overview
Station Keeping

Hold position in xyz coordinates

Array calibration

Sense power transmitted from known UAV location with ground antenna Several data points make complete antenna pattern

UAV Overview
Aircraft is a commercial off the shelf

(COTS) kit Avionics board developed specifically for this project, but can be used in many applications DGPS is low-cost COTS Communications hardware COTS Inertial measurement unit developed for this project to work with avionics board

General RC Helicopters
Control is three axis rotation and one axis

translation (pitch, roll, yaw, thrust)

Sensors
Three axis rate gyro and accelerometer data

(IMU) provides attitude information at ~500Hz DGPS provides xyz position information at 1Hz Drift rate of IMU puts helicopter outside of design requirements (2 meters away from starting position) in about 7-10 seconds due to sensor drift DGPS is able to correct for sensor drift once every second Combination provides station keeping to within ~0.5 meters

Avionics board
The avionics board is

based on a PIC18F8680 8-bit microcontroller IMU commands are read into the processor using onboard 10-bit analog to digital converter

Future Plans
Console based user interface

The radio modem for the DGPS can also be used to transmit position commands from a laptop to the avionics board. This would allow a user to enter coordinates of desired position. When calibration at that position was done, new coordinates could be entered and the helicopter would fly there then hold position.

Other Uses
Pilot Training The avionics board can be configured to provide augmented stability which makes training much easier. The helicopter acts like a flight-simulated helicopter in that any gusts or other transients are handled automatically, allowing the pilot to fly a simplified aircraft. Aerial Photography The helicopter can be commanded to a specified set of coordinates to take a picture. The helicopter could also be programmed with a pre-determined set of waypoints, allowing it to take a motion picture with camera angles that would be difficult or impossible otherwise.