2015 International Conference on Energy Systems and Applications (ICESA 2015)
Dr. D. Y. Patil Institute of Engineering and Technology, Pune, India 30 Oct - 01 Nov, 2015
Modeling and Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
D. Y. Dube
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Guru Gobind Singh College of Engineering
Nashik, India
deepalidube404@gmail.com
Abstract— In recent times the environment is much flooded with
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and it has been a subject of
great interest for researchers because of its varied applications
like capturing images, doing surveillance, monitoring terrorist
activities and certain space related missions. In this paper control
of Vertical Take-off Landing (VTOL) vehicle is discussed. It is
observed that the contemporary UAVs need an efficient and
better control of the aircraft. The aforesaid objective is achieved
through the analysis of VTOL aircraft, which is a non linear
system is further used for application of Adaptive Filter control
(AFC) strategy with filter and gain variation. The results
obtained from the simulations are compared with SMC which
shows the perfect tracking of position and velocity.
Keywords—Adaptive filter control; Mathematical model;
Unmanned aerial vehicles.
I. INTRODUCTION
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) relates to an aircraft
having no pilot on board. Such types of systems can be best
explained by considering the invention of drones. Drones are
the quad-copters which have four rotors providing the
necessary lift for aerial motion [1]. They are used as vision
sensing devices mostly by News Channels.
The concept of vertical flight aircraft can be found back to
early Chinese tops, a toy first used about 400 BC. This version
of the Chinese top had feathers at the end of a stick, which
was rapidly spun between the hands to produce or generate lift
and then released into free flight [1]. Different varieties of this
top such as Fixed Wing, Rotary Wing and Hybrid
Configuration Wings are now available and used for different
missions as per requirement. The tracking performance of only
attitude variable is improved [2]. The bounteousness of
tracking errors and weight errors are studied with Lyapunov
stability theorem for improved tracking performance. The
continuous updation of moments is required for accurate
tracking of consensus UAV. If long endurance and high cruise
speeds are required then fixed wing aircraft are applied for
usage [3, 4]. Rotary wing UAVs do not require long and
smooth runways for take-off and land. Their advantage is their
ability to operate in complicated and limited environment [5].
In [6] modeling and control of quad-rotor UAVs are
presented. Rao et al. [7] discussed the decentralised SMC that
enables a connected and leaderless swarm of UAVs to reach a
concord in altitude and heading angle. The degrees of
freedoms are extended which makes the modeling complex
and complicated.
978-1-4673-6817-9/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
R. K. Munje
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
K. K. Wagh Institute of Engineering
Nashik, India
ravimunje@yahoo.co.in
Raptis et al. [8] presented a model-based tracking control
design for small-scale unmanned helicopters. The design
objective for the helicopter was to track predefined inertial
position (or velocity) and heading reference trajectories [9]
focused on the situational awareness (SA), the control of self
governing vertical flight for tactical unmanned aerial vehicle
(TUAV). The control theory used for neural network is not
clear.
A gain scheduled inner (stability) loop structure is shown
to minimize the variance of the outer (guidance) loop gains
and increase the robustness of the system is discussed in [10].
In this paper, the short period and phugoid modes are damped
to the same nominal prescribed frequency. An under-actuated
vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft for a nonlinear
output-feedback control method is presented in [11]. A sliding
mode control strategy for VTOL aircraft with the stability of
the closed-loop system verified via Lyapunov method and
separation principle are proposed in [12].
Zhu et al. [13] considered the flight-trajectory tracking
problem of an input-disturbed non-minimum phase vertical
takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft with delayed attitude
measurements. The pade approximation used here makes the
control technique more complicated to understand, besides it
increases the number of states. A method of decoupling with
four steps and design of a sliding mode controller with the
coupling problem being taken into account in the controller
design, which provides a high practical value is given in [14].
The objective of this paper is to study a mathematical
model for VTOL aircraft [12] and regulate it by applying an
Adaptive Filter controller (AFC). This filter allows the system
to adapt to its disturbing environment and provide an accurate
tracking of velocity and position, whatever be the orientation
of the vehicle. Hence, not only the attitude but velocity and
position are also controlled in this paper.
The brief outline of this paper is as follows. In Section II,
system description is given. In Section III, adaptive filter
controller design is given. Simulation results details are
provided in Section IV and comparison with sliding mode
controller is presented which is followed by conclusion in
Section V.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
The Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) system with
the phenomenon of positive rolling that makes the aircraft
non-minimum phase is considered for control purpose. The
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Force diagram for this system is given in Fig. 1. The dynamic
model of VTOL obtained by using Newton's Law as given in
[12,13] is
-m‫ = ܬ‬-7į1 (t))sinș + İ0 Oį2(t))cosș
P٨ 7į1 (t))cosș + İ0 Oį2(t))sinș – mg
Iz٢ = Oį2(t)
Fig. 1. Force diagram of Vertical Take-off Landing Vehicle [15]
Here for simplicity we let – x1 = x, x2 = ‫ܪ‬, y1 = y, y2 = ‫ܮ‬
‫ܪ‬1 = x2
‫ܪ‬2 = -(u1 + 0.5sint)sinș + İ (u2 + 0.5cost)cosș
ਈ1 = y2
system insensitive to disturbances [2]. For example, the
decrease in the mass of an aircraft can be observed while it
flies, which can be attributed to the fuel consumption; for this,
a control law becomes imperative for it to adapt itself to any
(1) such varying conditions. Adaptive control is different from
(2) robust control in that it does not need prior information about
the bounds on these uncertain or time-varying parameters.
(3) Robust control guarantees that if the changes are within given
bounds there is no need to change the control law, while
adaptive control is mainly focused with control law changing
itself.
Parameter estimation is the foundation of adaptive control
system. Estimation can be done by some common methods
which include recursive least squares and gradient descent.
Both the aforesaid methods provide update laws which are
used to modify estimates in real time (i.e., as the system
operates). Lyapunov stability is used to derive these update
laws and show convergence criterion (typically persistent
excitation). Projection (mathematics) and normalization are
commonly used to improve the robustness of estimation
algorithms which is also known as adjustable control.
An adaptive control system is one which is made
intentionally nonlinear to obtain improved performance. The
control parameters are adjusted as functions of the plant
outputs as well as the output errors, and hence the overall
(4)
system is invariably nonlinear. The presence of the reference
(5) input as well as external disturbances also make the system
non-autonomous. As in any control system, an adaptive
(6) system is required to be stable and respond rapidly and
‫ܮ‬2 = (u1 + 0.5sintFRVșİX2 + 0.5cost)sinș – g (7) accurately to command inputs. Consider a Second order linear
system described by the model
٢ = u2 + 0.5cost (8)
‫ܪ‬p = ap xp + Kp u (16)
Writing above equation in vector form as here, p = 1,2,3,4,5,6. Then for the second order VTOL plant
[‫ܪ‬1, ‫ܪ‬2, ‫ܪ‬3, ‫ܪ‬4, ‫ܪ‬5, ‫ܪ‬6] (9) ‫ܪ‬1 = x2 (17)
Thus equations (4 - 9) can be modified as ‫ܪ‬2 = -0.5sintsinx2 + 0.25costcosx2 (18)
‫ܪ‬1 = x2 (10) System given in (16) is said to follow the reference system
given as
‫ܪ‬2 = -(u1 + 0.5sint)sinș + İX2 + 0.5cost)cosș (11)
‫ܪ‬m = am xm + Km u (19)
‫ܪ‬3 = x4 (12)
Here considering ‫ܪ‬2 equivalent to `U’ and defining filtered
‫ܪ‬4 = (u1 + 0.5sint)cosș + İX2 + 0.5cost)sinș – g (13) variables as,
‫ܪ‬5 = x6 (14) ‫ܪ‬2f = -ȕ[2f + x2 (20)
‫ܪ‬6 = u2 + 0.5cost (15) U2f = -ȕXf + U (21)
The above equations can be used to have a model for further Where ȕ > 0 taking derivative of the x2f filter equation to
analysis. All the notations and symbols are given in obtain “new” state equations in filtered variables
Nomenclature.
‫ܪ‬1 = ‫ܪ‬2f ȕ[2f (22)
-ȕW
‫ܪ‬2f = Uf + K e (23)
Now choosing
Uf = -Kp x1 – Kv x2f (24)
III. ADAPTIVE FILTER CONTROLLER DESIGN i.e. designing a linear control law of the form
Adaptive control is a control method by virtue of which a X ș৖1 UWș৖2 xp(t) (25)
controller can adapt to changes in parameter and makes the

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where, ș৖1 and ș৖2 are controller parameters. Also, there is need
of updation for values of Kp and Kv for which the Lypunov
Function would be such as to satisfy the stability analysis
V = ½ x12 + ½ x22 (26)
Hence, it can be generalized that if dV/dt is negative, ‘V’ will
decrease and if ap and kp are known, choose
ș৖1 = km/kp (27)
ș৖2 = (am – ap)/kp (28)
If ap and kp are unknown, we may choose the controller as
X ș1 Uș2 yp (29)
Here, ș1 and ș2 are adjusted on-line. Adaptation should be
Fig. 2. Angular velocity of Vertical Take-off Vehicle Aircraft
such that their values evolve to nominal values of ș৖1 and ș৖2.
The negative semi-definite dV/dt gives a relative nicer
trajectory in the output and the goal is achieved.
The following Lyapunov candidate is also applicable for
stability analysis,
V = ½ e2 NSș৖12 Ȗ1 NSș৖22Ȗ2 (30)
Here, Ȗ1 and Ȗ2 > 0.
Then after computing the derivative of ‘V’ in each case and
establishing stability along with update laws, each time the
curve modifies and removes the overshoots and undershoots
and makes the system remain close to origin as its settling
period.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

Fig. 3. Control input of Vertical Take-off Vehicle Aircraft
To implement the control, simulation is done and chosen
values [15] are as follows; İ = 0.5, g = 9.8, d = 50, yd =
0.1cos(t), ٨d = -0.1sin(t), ȟ1(t) = 0.5sin(t ȟ2(t) = 0.5cos(t).
The initial conditions are taken as x1(0) = 0.05, x2(0) = 0.01,
y1(0) = 0.05, y2(0) = 0.01, ș(0) = 0.05 and Ȧ(0) = 0.01. The
value of proportional and velocity gain is 3.1, Ȗ1 = Ȗ2 = 1.5 and
b = -4.5 which is the drag constant.
As can be seen in Fig 2, the response representing the
angular velocity of VTOL settles at equilibrium after
approximately 1.7 seconds, whereas SMC settles after some
vibrations in positive and negative regimes at great extent in
initial time lag as compared to AFC.
Similarly the control input for VTOL in Fig 3 settles at the
equilibrium value after approximately 1.2 seconds with little
initial fluctuation in positive regime whereas the SMC does
not settle at equilibrium. It settles after approximately 5.2 Fig. 4. Position of mass of Vertical Take-off Landing Aircraft
seconds at the value of 10.
Fig 4 illustrates the tracking performance of the vertical V. CONCLUSION
position in the longitudinal plane. It can be seen that the In this paper control of Vertical take-off Landing system is
response of proposed adaptive controller settles at origin value presented. The VTOL aircraft being a non linear system is
after approximately 2 seconds. The sliding mode controller analyzed by the filter and gain adjustment. It is further used in
settles at origin after approximately 2.5 seconds. The SMC comparison with SMC technique. The graph of angular
dips down to the value of around -1.5 within first second, velocity for VTOL settles after 1.7 seconds at origin whereas
whereas the response representing the proposed adaptive in case of SMC the settling time is approximately 5 seconds.
controller shows lesser fluctuations before settling to zero The control input also settles at origin after 1.3 seconds for
value. VTOL and after 6 seconds in case of SMC. Same trend is
observed in case of position control where VTOL settles

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