scholarly journals A Neural Network Based Landing Method for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Soft Landing Gears

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (15) ◽  
pp. 2976 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cai Luo ◽  
Weikang Zhao ◽  
Zhenpeng Du ◽  
Leijian Yu

This paper presents the design, implementation, and testing of a soft landing gear together with a neural network-based control method for replicating avian landing behavior on non-flat surfaces. With full consideration of unmanned aerial vehicles and landing gear requirements, a quadrotor helicopter, comprised of one flying unit and one landing assistance unit, is employed. Considering the touchdown speed and posture, a novel design of a soft mechanism for non-flat surfaces is proposed, in order to absorb the remaining landing impact. The framework of the control strategy is designed based on a derived dynamic model. A neural network-based backstepping controller is applied to achieve the desired trajectory. The simulation and outdoor testing results attest to the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed control method.

Electronics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 931 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cai Luo ◽  
Zhenpeng Du ◽  
Leijian Yu

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) demonstrate excellent manoeuvrability in cluttered environments, which makes them a suitable platform as a data collection and parcel delivering system. In this work, the attitude and position control challenges for a drone with a package connected by a wire is analysed. During the delivering task, it is very difficult to eliminate the external unpredictable disturbances. A robust neural network-based backstepping sliding mode control method is designed, which is capable of monitoring the drone’s flight path and desired attitude with a suspended cable attached. The convergence of the position and attitude errors together with the Lyapunov function are employed to attest to the robustness of the nonlinear transportation platform. The proposed control system is tested with a simulation and in an outdoor environment. The simulation and open field test results for the UAV transportation platform verify the controllers’ reliability.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jafar Tavoosi

PurposeIn this paper, an innovative hybrid intelligent position control method for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) tiltrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is proposed. So the more accurate the reference position signals tracking, the proposed control system will be better.Design/methodology/approachIn the proposed method, for the vertical flight mode, first the model reference adaptive controller (MRAC) operates and for the horizontal flight, the model predictive control (MPC) will operate. Since the linear model is used for both of these controllers and naturally has an error compared to the real nonlinear model, a neural network is used to compensate for them. So the main novelties of this paper are a new hybrid control design (MRAC & MPC) and a neural network-based compensator for tiltrotor UAV.FindingsThe proper performance of the proposed control method in the simulation results is clear. Also the results showed that the role of compensator is very important and necessary, especially in extreme speed wind conditions and uncertain parameters.Originality/valueNovel hybrid control method. 10;-New method to use neural network as compensator in an UAV.


Complexity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Youjun Chen ◽  
Songyu Wang

In this work, a backstepping controller design for fractional-order strict feedback systems is investigated and the neural network control method is used. It is noted that in the standard backstepping design, the fractional derivative of the virtual quantity needs to be calculated repeatedly, which will lead to a sharp increase in the number of controller terms with the increase of the system dimension and finally make the control system difficult to bear. To handle the estimation error, certain robust terms in the controller at the last step are designed. The stability of the controlled system is proven strictly. In addition, the proposed controller has a simple form which can be easily implemented. Finally, in order to verify our theoretical method, the control simulation based on a fractional-order chaotic system is implemented.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 2685
Author(s):  
Guojin Pei ◽  
Ming Yu ◽  
Yaohui Xu ◽  
Cui Ma ◽  
Houhu Lai ◽  
...  

A compliant constant-force actuator based on the cylinder is an important tool for the contact operation of robots. Due to the nonlinearity and time delay of the pneumatic system, the traditional proportional–integral–derivative (PID) method for constant force control does not work so well. In this paper, an improved PID control method combining a backpropagation (BP) neural network and the Smith predictor is proposed. Through MATLAB simulation and experimental validation, the results show that the proposed method can shorten the maximum overshoot and the adjustment time compared with traditional the PID method.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 5445
Author(s):  
Shengyong Gan ◽  
Xingbo Fang ◽  
Xiaohui Wei

The aim of this paper is to obtain the strut friction–touchdown performance relation for designing the parameters involving the strut friction of the landing gear in a light aircraft. The numerical model of the landing gear is validated by drop test of single half-axle landing gear, which is used to obtain the energy absorption properties of strut friction in the landing process. Parametric studies are conducted using the response surface method. Based on the design of the experiment results and response surface functions, the sensitivity analysis of the design variables is implemented. Furthermore, a multi-objective optimization is carried out for good touchdown performance. The results show that the proportion of energy absorption of friction load accounts for more than 35% of the total landing impact energy. The response surface model characterizes well for the landing response, with a minimum fitting accuracy of 99.52%. The most sensitive variables for the four landing responses are the lower bearing width and the wheel moment of inertia. Moreover, the max overloading of sprung mass in LC-1 decreases by 4.84% after design optimization, which illustrates that the method of analysis and optimization on the strut friction of landing gear is efficient for improving the aircraft touchdown performance.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (19) ◽  
pp. 4115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuxia Li ◽  
Bo Peng ◽  
Lei He ◽  
Kunlong Fan ◽  
Zhenxu Li ◽  
...  

Roads are vital components of infrastructure, the extraction of which has become a topic of significant interest in the field of remote sensing. Because deep learning has been a popular method in image processing and information extraction, researchers have paid more attention to extracting road using neural networks. This article proposes the improvement of neural networks to extract roads from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) remote sensing images. D-Linknet was first considered for its high performance; however, the huge scale of the net reduced computational efficiency. With a focus on the low computational efficiency problem of the popular D-LinkNet, this article made some improvements: (1) Replace the initial block with a stem block. (2) Rebuild the entire network based on ResNet units with a new structure, allowing for the construction of an improved neural network D-Linknetplus. (3) Add a 1 × 1 convolution layer before DBlock to reduce the input feature maps, reducing parameters and improving computational efficiency. Add another 1 × 1 convolution layer after DBlock to recover the required number of output channels. Accordingly, another improved neural network B-D-LinknetPlus was built. Comparisons were performed between the neural nets, and the verification were made with the Massachusetts Roads Dataset. The results show improved neural networks are helpful in reducing the network size and developing the precision needed for road extraction.


2012 ◽  
Vol 225 ◽  
pp. 275-280
Author(s):  
Chandra B. Asthana ◽  
Rama B. Bhat

Most landing gears used in aircraft employ very efficient oleo-pneumatic dampers to absorb and dissipate the impact kinetic energy of the aircraft body frame. A single-acting shock absorber is most commonly used in the oleo strut that has a metering pin extending through the orifice, which can vary the orifice area upon compression and extension of the strut. This variation is adjusted by shaping the metering pin so that the strut load is fairly constant under dynamic loading. In this paper, it is proposed to further change the damping coefficient as a function of time in order to achieve a semi-active control of the aircraft vibrations during landing by using Magnetorheological (MR) fluid in the Oleo. With the metering pin designed for a nominal flight condition, further variation in the fluid viscosity would help achieve the optimal performance in off-nominal flight conditions. A simulation approach is employed to show the effect of different profiles for viscosity variation in the MR fluid. The utility of such a damper can be very well exploited to include different criteria such as the landing distance after touchdown. This type of system can be used also in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) application where the focus of design may be to accomplish the task without the consideration of passenger comfort.


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