Modelling, attitude controller design and flight experiments of a novel micro-ducted-fan aircraft

This research concerns a novel micro-ducted-fan aircraft. A structured attitude controller is designed for a novel unmanned aerial vehicle in the presence of strong state coupling and system perturbation. The novel unmanned aerial vehicle is equipped with two tandem ducted fans to provide the main thrust. Relative to conventional (open-rotor) aircraft, our novel unmanned aerial vehicle can perform much better in indoor or other complex conditions. The inherent advantages of the duct structure also make this type of unmanned aerial vehicle more compact and efficient. In this research, a structured multi-loop feedback attitude controller is employed based on H-infinity synthesis and tuned using a type of non-smooth optimization method. This non-smooth optimization method directly and efficiently tunes the proposed control parameters to ideal structures while ensuring satisfactory practical control performance. A series of computer simulations and basic flight experiments are applied to evaluate the performance of the proposed controller. The results of simulations and experiments confirm that the performance of the proposed attitude controller is reliable and efficient in practice.