Browsing by Author "Roos, Jan-Cor (Jan Corver)"
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- ItemAutonomous take-off and landing of a fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicle(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2007-03) Roos, Jan-Cor (Jan Corver); Milne, Garth W.; Peddle, Iain K.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Engineering. Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The successful design and practical demonstration of controllers required for autonomous take-off and landing of a fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicle is presented. The project serves as an extension to the autonomous navigation autopilot developed in [1] 1 • All aspects of the controller design are presented, from modelling to practical testing and evaluation. A non-linear model for the aircraft dynamics on the runway, a fixed pitch propeller model, a piston engine model and a wind gust model were developed. The conventional flight controllers were extended and improved to remove the single trim condition constraint. The avionics used for autonomous navigation were redesigned and extended to form a small, robust, reliable and professional hardware platform that includes hardware in the loop (HIL) simulation capabilities. Together with the non-linear models developed and the HIL capabilities from [22] a full non-linear hardware in the loop simulator was formed. Throughout the development of the project the system was subjected to and verified through practical testing. The project saw the successful autonomous take-off and landing of the Reliance 0.46 size model aircraft.