Fault tolerant attitude control for small unmanned aircraft systems equipped with an airflow sensor array

Area of Science:

• Aerospace Engineering
• Control Systems
• Bio-inspired Design

Background:

• Traditional aircraft control relies on external sensors.
• Birds and bats utilize onboard airflow sensing for agile maneuvering.
• Small unmanned aircraft systems (SUAS) can benefit from bio-inspired sensing strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel attitude control concept for SUAS using real-time pressure and shear stress data.
• To propose a computationally tractable mapping function for calculating aerodynamic moments from sensor data.
• To design an adaptive control system robust to sensor failures.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing an array of onboard airflow sensors to measure surface pressure and shear stress.
• Developing a mapping function to compute aerodynamic moments from sensor readings.
• Implementing an adaptive control algorithm to compensate for sensor failures and numerical inaccuracies.

Main Results:

• The proposed mapping function provides a practical formulation for aerodynamic moment computation.
• Simulations demonstrated stable attitude control and command tracking even with up to 50% sensor failure.
• The adaptive control system effectively handled failures in symmetrically distributed and wing-specific sensor arrays.

Conclusions:

• Real-time airflow sensing offers a promising approach for enhancing SUAS attitude control.
• The developed adaptive control system ensures robustness and reliability in the presence of sensor failures.
• Bio-inspired sensing strategies can lead to significant improvements in SUAS flight performance and resilience.