Engineering Commons^™

Attitude Control Of Vtol Hexrotor Aircraft Based On Lyapunov Theory, Xuemin Yuan, Kecai Cao

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: The considered hexrotor is a symmetric VTOL-UAV with six rigid mono-directional propellers, and the interval between each propeller is 60°. In order to overcome the inherent geometric singularity of Euler angle description, quaternion representation was used to model. The effect of gyroscopic torques and reactive torques was taken into account when simplifying our model. An approach for hexrotor was proposed in which two nearly equivalent control laws were used to obtain asymptotic stability of attitude angles and attitude angular velocity of the hexrotor UAV. Simulation results emphasize the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

Path Planning And Control Simulation Of Unpowered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Uav) Returning To The Airport, Yijun Zhang, Yiqun Dong, Zhan Guang, Jianliang Ai

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: The unpowered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) return to the airport unpoweredly is a link of large risk and complex technology during the flight, and it is the key stage which affects the flight safety of the UAV. The basic control strategy and path planning of the unpowered UAV's back to the airport were studied, and the method which calculated the average drag of the return was proposed. Under the condition of multiple constraints, the flight control model of the UAV's return was established. It is proved that the result of the simulation is effective and has built a foundation …

Three-Dimensional, Vision-Based Proportional Navigation For Uav Collision Avoidance, Guanhong Gao

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

As the number of potential applications for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) keeps rising steadily, the chances that these devices will operate in close proximity to static or dynamic obstacles also increases. Therefore, collision avoidance is an important challenge to overcome for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle operations. Electro-optical devices have several advantages such as light weight, low cost, low algorithm requirements with respect to computational power and possibly night vision capabilities. Therefore, vision-based Unmanned Aerial Vehicle collision avoidance has received considerable attention. Although much progress has been made in collision avoidance systems (CAS), most approaches are focused on two-dimensional environments. In order …

Power-Over-Tether Uas Leveraged For Nearly-Indefinite Meteorological Data Acquisition, Daniel Rico, Carrick Detweiler, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in agriculture has risen in the past decade. These systems are key to modernizing agriculture. UASs collect and elucidate data previously difficult to obtain and used to help increase agricultural efficiency and production. Typical commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) UASs are limited by small payloads and short flight times. Such limits inhibit their ability to provide abundant data at multiple spatiotemporal scales. In this paper, we describe the design and construction of the tethered aircraft unmanned system (TAUS), which is a novel power-over-tether UAS leveraging the physical presence of the tether to launch multiple sensors along …

Automatic Delamination Segmentation For Bridge Deck Based On Encoder-Decoder Deep Learning Through Uav-Based Thermography, Chongsheng Cheng, Zhexiong Shang, Zhigang Shen

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Faculty Publications

Concrete deck delamination often demonstrates strong variations in size, shape, and temperature distribution under the influences of outdoor weather conditions. The strong variations create challenges for pure analytical solutions in infrared image segmentation of delaminated areas. The recently developed supervised deep learning approach demonstrated the potentials in achieving automatic segmentation of RGB images. However, its effectiveness in segmenting thermal images remains under-explored. The main challenge lies in the development of specific models and the generation of a large range of labeled infrared images for training. To address this challenge, a customized deep learning model based on encoder-decoder architecture is proposed …

Optimized 3d Reconstruction For Infrastructure Inspection With Automated Structure From Motion And Machine Learning Methods, Samuel Arce Munoz

Theses and Dissertations

Infrastructure monitoring is being transformed by the advancements on remote sensing, unmanned vehicles and information technology. The wide interaction among these fields and the availability of reliable commercial technology are helping pioneer intelligent inspection methods based on digital 3D models. Commercially available Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used to create 3D photogrammetric models of industrial equipment. However, the level of automation of these missions remains low. Limited flight time, wireless transfer of large files and the lack of algorithms to guide a UAV through unknown environments are some of the factors that constraint fully automated UAV inspections. This work …

Aerodynamic And Aeroacoustic Performance Of Small Uav Propellers In Static Conditions, William Jordan, Robert W. Deters, Shreyas Narsipur

Publications

The proliferation of small multi-rotor UAVs in commercial, recreational, and surveillance spheres has garnered significant interest in the noise produced by these vehicles. The current research aims to study the relationship between the aerodynamic performance and acoustic characteristics of small-scale UAV propellers. Three commercially available propellers for the DJI Phantom 2/3 UAV were selected for preliminary development and validation of an aeroacoustic experimental test setup and associated data reduction methods. Propeller thrust, torque, and power measurements were recorded at static conditions. Upon successful validation of the test bench, acoustic measurements were taken at the propeller disk’s upstream and in-plane locations. …

Performance Testing Of Aero-Naut Camfolding Propellers, Or D. Dantsker, Robert W. Deters, Marco Caccamo, Michael S. Selig

Publications

The increase in popularity of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been driven by their use in civilian, education, government, and military applications. However, limited on-board energy storage significantly limits flight time and ultimately usability. The propulsion system plays a critical part in the overall energy consumption of the UAV; therefore, it is necessary to determine the most optimal combination of possible propulsion system components for a given mission profile, i.e. propellers, motors, and electronic speed controllers (ESC). Hundreds of options are available for the different components with little performance specifications available for most of them. By examining a variety of …

Data Driven Simulation Of Polluted Gas Dispersion Using Source Estimation And Particle Filter, Rongxiao Wang, Bin Chen, Sihang Qiu, Zhengqiu Zhu, Xiaogang Qiu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: The real-time prediction of the air contaminant dispersion in chemical industry park is important to the emergency management of air pollution accident. Due to the unknown source terms and the error of input parameters in the atmospheric dispersion model, the accuracy of traditional simulation is limited. A data driven atmospheric dispersion simulation based on source estimation and particle filter was proposed. Based on the results of the source estimation, particle filter was applied to assimilate the UAV observation into the dispersion model in real time to calibrate the system state and obtain more accurate prediction results. Experiments show that …

Design And Test Of An Autonomy Monitoring Service To Detect Divergent Behaviors On Unmanned Aerial Systems, Loay Y. Almannaei

Theses and Dissertations

Operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) support many critical missions in the United State Air Force (USAF). Monitoring abnormal behavior is one of many responsibilities of the operator during a mission. Some behaviors are hard to be detect by an operator, especially when flying one or more autonomous vehicles; as such, detections require a high level of attention and focus to flight parameters. In this research, a monitoring system and its algorithm are designed and tested for a target fixed-wing UAV. The Autonomy Monitoring Service (AMS) compares the real vehicle or simulated Vehicle with a similar simulated vehicle using Software …

Conceptual Design Of A South Pole Carrier Pigeon Uav, Kendrick M. Dlima

Master's Theses

Currently, the South Pole has a large data problem. It is estimated that 1.2 TB of data is being produced every day, but less than 500 GB of that data is being uploaded via aging satellites to researchers in other parts of the world. This requires those at the South Pole to analyze the data and carefully select the parts to send, possibly missing out on vital scientific information. The South Pole Carrier Pigeon will look to bridge this data gap.

The Carrier Pigeon will be a small unmanned aerial vehicle that will carry a 30 TB solid-state hard drive …

Modeling And Simulation Of A Robotic Bridge Inspection System, Md Monirul Karim, Cihan H. Dagli, Ruwen Qin

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Inspection and preservation of the aging bridges to extend their service life has been recognized as one of the important tasks of the State Departments of Transportation. Yet manual inspection procedure is not efficient to determine the safety status of the bridges in order to facilitate the implementation of appropriate maintenance. In this paper, a complex model involving a remotely controlled robotic platform is proposed to inspect the safety status of the bridges which will eliminate labor-intensive inspection. Mobile cameras from unmanned airborne vehicles (UAV) are used to collect bridge inspection data in order to record the periodic changes of …

System-Level Analysis Of Autonomous Uav Landing Sensitivities In Gps-Denied Environments, Terran R. Gerratt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This paper presents an analysis of the navigation accuracy of an fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) landing on a aircraft carrier. The UAV is equipped with typical sensors used in landing scenarios. Data from the Office of Naval Research is used to accurately capture the behavior of the aircraft carrier. Through simulation, the position and orientation of both the UAV and carrier are estimated. The quality of the UAV’s sensors are varied to determine the sensitivity of these estimates to sensor accuracy. The system’s sensitivity to GPS signals and visual markers on the carrier is also analyzed. These results allow …

Urban Cargo Transport Uav Final Design Review, Niko Giannakakos, Rafael Barreto Gutierrez, Tejas Bhavsar

Senior Design Project For Engineers

Delivery of goods to homes and offices over the last decades has seen a significant increase as more people and businesses need or want items sent directly to them. With the increase in demand, technology has also experienced a rapid growth, specifically in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Many major companies are currently researching UAVs as the future of their delivery operations. With this ever-growing demand, NASA has issued a design competition of a UAV developed for urban deliveries. This unmanned aircraft system (UAS) would need to be able to deliver small packages, in a timely manner, within …

Pitch And Thrust Allocation For Full-Flight-Regime Control Of Winged Evtol Uavs, Jacob B. Willis, Randal W. Beard

Faculty Publications

Trajectory tracking control for winged eVTOL aircraft is complicated by the high-angle-of-attack aerodynamics experienced during navigational flight occurring immediately after takeoff and immediately before landing. The total energy use of the vehicle can be reduced and the control performance can be improved by appropriately considering the pitch angle of the vehicle in varying flight conditions. We present a review of high-angle-of-attack aerodynamic models as well as an algorithm for finding the optimal pitch and thrust of a winged eVTOL throughout its flight regime. We show simulation results demonstrating a 75% reduction in tracking error over our previous work while maintaining …

Sliver: Simulation-Based Logic Bomb Identification/Verification For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Jake M. Magness

Theses and Dissertations

This research introduces SLIVer, a Simulation-based Logic Bomb Identification/Verification methodology, for finding logic bombs hidden within Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) autopilot code without having access to the device source code. Effectiveness is demonstrated by executing a series of test missions within a high-fidelity software-in-the-loop (SITL) simulator. In the event that a logic bomb is not detected, this methodology defines safe operating areas for UAVs to ensure to a high degree of confidence the UAV operates normally on the defined flight plan. SLIVer uses preplanned flight paths as the baseline input space, greatly reducing the input space that must be searched …

Development Of A Drone-Mounted Wireless Attack Platform, Nathan V. Barker

Theses and Dissertations

The commercial drone market has grown rapidly due to the increasing utility and capabilities of drones. This new found popularity has made it possible for inexpensive drones capable of impressive carry capacities and flight times to reach the consumer market. These new features also offer an invaluable resource to wireless hackers. Capitalizing on their mobility, a wireless hacker can equip a drone with hacking tools to surpass physical security (e.g. fences) with relative ease and reach wireless networks. This research seeks to experimentally evaluate the ability of a drone-mounted wireless attack platform equipped with a directional antenna to conduct wireless …

Error-State Estimation And Control For A Multirotor Uav Landing On A Moving Vehicle, Michael David Farrell

Theses and Dissertations

Though multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become widely used during the past decade, challenges in autonomy have prevented their widespread use when moving vehicles act as their base stations. Emerging use cases, including maritime surveillance, package delivery and convoy support, require UAVs to autonomously operate in this scenario. This thesis presents improved solutions to both the state estimation and control problems that must be solved to enable robust, autonomous landing of multirotor UAVs onto moving vehicles.Current state-of-the-art UAV landing systems depend on the detection of visual fiducial markers placed on the landing target vehicle. However, in challenging conditions, such …

Early Detection Of Near-Surface Void Defects In Concrete Pavement Using Drone Based Thermography And Gpr Methods, Zhigang Shen, Ece Erdogmus, George Morcous, Chngsheng Cheng, Zhexiong Shang, Theresa Mccabe, Antony Mohsen Kamal Masoud Kodsy

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

The goal of this research is to evaluate the feasibility and the performance of using UAV-mounted infrared thermography (IRT) and ground penetration radar (GPR) to detect sub-surface voids caused by consolidation issues in concrete pavement. The motivation of the study is to identify the consolidation defects as early as the initial set of concrete to avoid having this problem in large pavement sections, which is costly and time consuming to repair. Using the two technologies in combination to detect subsurface voids in the concrete initial set stage is new and aims to take advantage of the strengths and minimize the …

Active Fault-Tolerance Of The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Automatic Control Systems, Vuong Anh Trung, Nguyen Van Thinh, Nguyen Duc Thanh, Nguyen Quang Vinh, Tran Thuan Hoang

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

This paper presents an introductory overview of principles of the three-layer hierarchy of active fault-tolerance, providing, determination of the fault type with as many details as enough to get recoverable fault reason and failure toleration by flexible redundancy using; the conception of active fault-tolerant control in abnormal modes is described. Developed models and methods of a systematic approach to fault tolerance in the direction of the effective use of the signal, parametric and structural redundancies and selection of parrying tools. Performed experimental researches of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) automatic control systems (ACS).

The Dynamic Transition Of A Vertical Take-Off And Landing Drone, Luis Carlos Calvo Jr.

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are small pilotless aircrafts that are remotely controlled through a ground control station. They have increased in popularity because of their applications and the advantages that each UAV can provide based on their need. There are many types of UAVs, but this study focuses on a type of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) UAV that is known as the Albatross UAV. This UAV was manufactured by a company known as Applied Aeronautics, and configurations were made to change the fixed-wing (FW) UAV to a VTOL UAV. This study was done to find methodologies to simulate …

Review Of Modern Nondestructive Testing Techniques For Civil Infrastructure, Shabnam Khanal

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The repair and maintenance of aging infrastructures, in the United States alone, are estimated to have backlogs of trillions of dollars. This has posed widespread concerns about the existing and proposed infrastructures to adequately sustain the quality of life in the near future. Efficient and cost-effective approaches, such as nondestructive testing (NDT), are therefore required to better shape our future. Various NDT techniques have been developed over the past two decades with cutting-edge advances towards investigation and condition assessment of civil infrastructures. While the performance of NDT techniques has reached unparalleled heights, limitations remain. On one side, are the instrument …

Improving Coverage Method Of Autonomous Drones For Environmental Monitoring, Ömür Yildirim, Revna Acar Vural, Klaus Diepold

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

With the rapid developments of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), usage of UAVs is increasing to bring autonomy for complicated processes such as environmental monitoring. Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental monitoring tasks are highly demanding in terms of time and resources. To reduce expensive costs of operations, improvements on autonomous observation capabilities has a key role. In this work, we offer coverage improvements for our autonomous environmental monitoring system. We compared different path planning approaches to find out the optimum path planning solution. Simulation results showed that required task execution time and required resources are decreased by usage …

Incorporation Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Uav) Point Cloud Products Into Remote Sensing Evapotranspiration Models, Mahyar Aboutalebi, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Mac Mckee, William P. Kustas, Héctor Nieto, Maria Mar Alsina, Alex White, John H. Prueger, Lynn Mckee, Joseph Alfieri, Lawrence E. Hipps, Calvin Coopmans, Nick Dokoozlian

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

In recent years, the deployment of satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has led to production of enormous amounts of data and to novel data processing and analysis techniques for monitoring crop conditions. One overlooked data source amid these efforts, however, is incorporation of 3D information derived from multi-spectral imagery and photogrammetry algorithms into crop monitoring algorithms. Few studies and algorithms have taken advantage of 3D UAV information in monitoring and assessment of plant conditions. In this study, different aspects of UAV point cloud information for enhancing remote sensing evapotranspiration (ET) models, particularly the Two-Source Energy Balance Model (TSEB), over …

Multiple Agent Target Tracking In Gps-Denied Environments, Skyler Tolman

Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are effective for surveillance and monitoring, but struggle with persistent, long-term tracking, especially without GPS, due to limited flight time. Persistent tracking can be accomplished using multiple vehicles if one vehicle can effectively hand off the tracking information to another replacement vehicle. This work presents a solution to the moving-target handoff problem in the absence of GPS. The proposed solution (a) a nonlinear complementary filter for self-pose estimation using only an IMU, (b) a particle filter for relative pose estimation between UAS using a relative range (c) visual target tracking using a gimballed camera when the …

Backstepping Approach For Design Of Cascaded Pid Controller With Guaranteed Trajectory Tracking Performance For Micro-Air Uav, Yusuf Kartal

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Flight controllers for micro-air UAVs are generally designed using Proportional- Integral-Derivative (PID) methods, where the tuning of gains is difficult and time-consuming, and performance is not guaranteed. In this thesis, we develop a rigorous method based on the sliding mode analysis and nonlinear backstepping to design a PID controller with guaranteed performance. This technique provides the structure and gains for the PID controller, such that a robust and fast response of the UAV for trajectory tracking is achieved. First, the second-order sliding variable errors are used in a rigorous nonlinear backstepping design to obtain guaranteed performance for the nonlinear UAV …

Domain Adaptation In Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Landing Using Reinforcement Learning, Pedro Lucas Franca Albuquerque

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Landing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on a moving platform is a challenging task that often requires exact models of the UAV dynamics, platform characteristics, and environmental conditions. In this thesis, we present and investigate three different machine learning approaches with varying levels of domain knowledge: dynamics randomization, universal policy with system identification, and reinforcement learning with no parameter variation. We first train the policies in simulation, then perform experiments both in simulation, making variations of the system dynamics with wind and friction coefficient, then perform experiments in a real robot system with wind variation. We initially expected that providing …

Adaptive Learning Terrain Estimation For Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Applications, Pedro L. Vergara Garcia

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

For the past decade, terrain mapping research has focused on ground robots using occupancy grids and tree-like data structures, like Octomap and Quadtrees. Since flight vehicles have different constraints, ground-based terrain mapping research may not be directly applicable to the aerospace industry. To address this issue, Adaptive Learning Terrain Estimation algorithms have been developed with an aim towards aerospace applications. This thesis develops and tests Adaptive Learning Terrain Estimation algorithms using a custom test benchmark on representative aerospace cases: autonomous UAV landing and UAV flight through 3D urban environments. The fundamental objective of this thesis is to investigate the use …

Extending Mission Duration Of Uas Multicopters: Multi-Disciplinary Approach, Marc Lussier

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Multicopters are important tools in industry, the military, and research but suffer from short flight times and mission durations. In this thesis, we discuss three different ways to increase flight times and therefore increase the viability of using multicopters in a variety of missions. Alternate fuel sources such as hydrogen fuel and solar cells are starting to be used on multicopters, in our research we simulate modern fuel cells and show how well they currently work as the power source for multicopters and how close they are to becoming useful in Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) technology. Increasing the efficiency in …

Collaborative Uav Planning, Mapping, And Exploration In Gps-Denied Environments, Jacob Moroni Olson

Theses and Dissertations

The use of multirotor UAVs to map GPS-degraded environments is useful for many purposes ranging from routine structural inspections to post-disaster exploration to search for survivors and evaluate structural integrity. Multirotor UAVs are able to reach many areas that humans and other robots cannot safely access. Because of their relatively short operational flight time compared to other robotic applications, using multiple UAVs to collaboratively map these environments can streamline the mapping process significantly. This research focuses on four primary areas regarding autonomous mapping and navigation with multiple UAVs in complex unknown or partially unknown GPS-denied environments: The first area is …