Autonomous Takeoff and Flight of a Tethered Aircraft for Airborne Wind Energy

A control design approach to achieve fully autonomous takeoff and flight maneuvers with a tethered aircraft is presented and demonstrated in real-world flight tests with a small-scale prototype. A ground station equipped with a controlled winch and a linear motion system accelerates the aircraft to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on control systems technology 2018-01, Vol.26 (1), p.151-166
Main Authors: Fagiano, Lorenzo, Nguyen-Van, Eric, Rager, Felix, Schnez, Stephan, Ohler, Christian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerospace control
Airborne wind energy (AWE)
Aircraft
Aircraft maneuvers
Atmospheric modeling
autonomous flight
autonomous takeoff
Control systems design
Controllers
Feedback control
Flight tests
Ground stations
high-altitude wind energy
Launching
Linear motion systems
Mathematical models
Parameter identification
Parameter robustness
Propellers
Prototypes
Robustness
Takeoff
tethered aircraft
unmanned aerial vehicle
Winches
Wind energy
Wind power
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Summary:A control design approach to achieve fully autonomous takeoff and flight maneuvers with a tethered aircraft is presented and demonstrated in real-world flight tests with a small-scale prototype. A ground station equipped with a controlled winch and a linear motion system accelerates the aircraft to takeoff speed and controls the tether reeling in order to limit the pulling force. This setup corresponds to airborne wind energy (AWE) systems with ground-based energy generation and rigid aircrafts. A simple model of the aircraft's dynamics is introduced and its parameters are identified from experimental data. A model-based, hierarchical feedback controller is then designed, whose aim is to manipulate the elevator, aileron, and propeller inputs in order to stabilize the aircraft during the takeoff and to achieve figure-of-eight flight patterns parallel to the ground. The controller operates in a fully decoupled mode with respect to the ground station. Parameter tuning and stability/robustness aspect are discussed, too. The experimental results indicate that the controller is able to achieve satisfactory performance and robustness, notwithstanding its simplicity, and confirm that the considered takeoff approach is technically viable and solves the issue of launching this kind of AWE systems in a compact space and at low additional cost.
ISSN:1063-6536
1558-0865
DOI:10.1109/TCST.2017.2661825