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Navigation, Guidance, Control and Dynamics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Simulation

2010

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Full-Text Articles in Navigation, Guidance, Control and Dynamics

Modeling And Simulation Of Autonomous Thermal Soaring With Horizon Simulation Framework, Zhenhua Li Dec 2010

Modeling And Simulation Of Autonomous Thermal Soaring With Horizon Simulation Framework, Zhenhua Li

Master's Theses

A thermal is a column of warm rising air triggered by differential heating on the ground. In recent studies UAVs were programmed to exploit this free atmospheric energy from thermals to improve their range and endurance. Researchers had successfully flown UAVs autonomously with thermal soaring method. Most research involved some form of flight simulation. Improvements to the aircraft and thermal models for simulation purpose would enable researchers to better design their UAVs and explore any potential flaws in their designs. An aircraft simulation with a thermal environment was created in Horizon Simulation Framework, a modeling and verification framework that was …


Autonomous Control Of The Cal Poly Motion Flight Simulator, Andrew M. Anderson Jun 2010

Autonomous Control Of The Cal Poly Motion Flight Simulator, Andrew M. Anderson

Aerospace Engineering

An autonomous controller for the Cal Poly Motion Flight Simulator was developed such that the simulated Van’s RV-7 flies a standard light aircraft traffic pattern without any human pilot input. First, an autopilot was developed in Simulink to control the aircraft’s altitude, airspeed, and heading independent of each other. The performance of the autopilot has been tested to perform with a response sufficient for precise navigation. A C++ s- function was written as a mission controller that followed a pre-programmed path around a known airport. The aircraft performs a standard left 45 degree entry into the traffic pattern, lands on …


Control Law Design And Validation For A Helicopter In-Flight Simulator, Brian T. Fujizawa Feb 2010

Control Law Design And Validation For A Helicopter In-Flight Simulator, Brian T. Fujizawa

Master's Theses

In-flight simulation allows one aircraft to simulate the dynamic response of another aircraft. A control system designed to give RASCAL, a JUH-60A Black Hawk helicopter based at Moffett Field, CA, in-flight simulation capabilities has been designed, optimized and validated in this research. A classical explicit model following control system with a frequency dependent feedback controller was used. The frequency dependent controller allows model following of the attitude in the short term and the velocity in the long term. Controller gains were optimized using a high order, linearized model of UH-60 dynamics. Non-linear simulations of the control laws were performed, first …