Development and application of an integrated framework for small UAV flight control development

This paper presents an integrated framework for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight control development. The approach provides a systematic procedure for flight control design process with a set of design tools that enables control engineers to rapidly synthesize, analyze and validate a candidate controller design. A model-based environment integrated with control synthesis, off-line and real-time simulation is developed for flight control synthesis, analysis and testings. The effectiveness of the proposed integrated framework is demonstrated by applying the framework approach to a small UAV testbed. Software-in-the-loop, processor-in-the-loop and flight testings are conducted with the synthesized controller implemented. Closed-loop performance and robustness results obtained are presented. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.