A novel approach to the automatic control of scale model airplanes

International audience— This paper explores a new approach to the control of scale model airplanes as an extension of previous studies addressing the case of vehicles presenting a symmetry of revolution about the thrust axis. The approach is intrinsically nonlinear and, with respect to other contributions on aircraft nonlinear control, no small attack angle assumption is made in order to enlarge the controller's operating domain. Simulation results conducted on a simplified, but not overly simplistic, model of a small airliner illustrate the soundness of the approach

A nonlinear approach to the control of a disc-shaped aircraft

International audienceThis paper describes a new control approach for scale-model airplanes. The proposed control solution is primarily geared towards drones whose lift surfaces can be approximated by a disc-shaped wing. Designed and analysed on the basis of a specific model of aerodynamic forces acting on the aircraft, it departs from other solutions in its capacity to handle important and rapidly changing attack angles within a large flight envelope. Simulation results illustrate its robust performance

A novel approach to dynamic soaring modeling and simulation

This paper revisits dynamic soaring on the basis of a nonlinear point-mass flight dynamics model previously used for scale-model aircraft to design path-following autopilots endowed with theoretically and experimentally demonstrated stability and convergence properties. The energy-harvesting process associated with specific maneuvers of a glider subjected to horizontal wind, and on which dynamic soaring relies, is explained at the light of this model. Expressions for the estimates of various variables involved in dynamic soaring along inclined circular paths crossing a thin wind shear layer, as experienced by model glider pilots over the world, are derived via approximate integration of the model equations. Given a glider's path and a wind profile, this model also presents the asset of yielding an explicit ordinary differential equation that entirely characterizes the time-evolution of the modeled glider's state along the path, thus allowing for an easy simulation of dynamic soaring over a large variety of operating conditions. We view this simulation facility as a tool that usefully complements other studies of dynamic soaring that focus on trajectory optimization via dynamic programming. Its usefulness is here illustrated by first validating the aforementioned estimates in the case of circular trajectories crossing a thin wind shear layer, then by showing how it applies to other examples of trajectories and ocean wind profile models commonly considered in studies about the dynamic soaring abilities of albatrosses