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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Tailsitter Attitude Control Using Resolved Tilt-Twist, Timothy Mclain, Jason M. Beach, Matthew E. Argyle, Randall W. Beard, Stephen Morris
Tailsitter Attitude Control Using Resolved Tilt-Twist, Timothy Mclain, Jason M. Beach, Matthew E. Argyle, Randall W. Beard, Stephen Morris
Faculty Publications
The tailsitter aircraft merges the endurance and speed of fixed-wing aircraft with the flexibility and VTOL abilities of rotorcraft. Because of the requirement to be functional at a full range of attitudes, quaternions are typically employed to calculate attitude error. Attitude control is then accomplished by using the vector component of the error quaternion to drive flight control surfaces. This paper demonstrates that this method of driving the flight control surfaces can be suboptimal for tailsitter type aircraft and can lead to undesired vehicle movement. An alternate method of calculating attitude error called resolved tilt-twist is improved and validated. The …
Quadrotors And Accelerometers: State Estimation With An Improved Dynamic Model, Robert C. Leishman, John Macdonald, Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. Mclain
Quadrotors And Accelerometers: State Estimation With An Improved Dynamic Model, Robert C. Leishman, John Macdonald, Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. Mclain
Faculty Publications
The article examines consequences and practical aspects of using an improved dynamic model for quadrotor state estimation with only IMU measurements. The improved model correctly explains the measurements available from the accelerometers on a quadrotor. We give a brief tutorial to explain the difference between accelerometer measurements on a ground vehicle and a quadrotor. We demonstrate several observers based on the improved model to illustrate the estimation improvements available. It is shown that the parameters for this model can be estimated as elements of the state, which makes the model simple to implement and utilize. Finally, we provide hardware results …