LPV Model-based Adaptive MPC of an eVTOL Aircraft During Tilt Transition Subject to Motor Failure

• Published in: International journal of control, automation, and systems Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 339 - 349
• Main Authors: Qu, Shen, Zhu, Guoming, Su, Weihua, Swei, Sean Shan-Min
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bucheon / Seoul Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems and The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers 01.02.2023; Springer Nature B.V; 제어·로봇·시스템학회
• Subjects: Aircraft; Aircraft models; Angular position; Attitude (inclination); Control; Control systems design; Engineering; Failure; Flight altitude; Hovering; Hovering flight; Mechatronics; Predictive control; Regular Papers; Robotics; Rotor speed; Trajectories; Variable thrust; Vertical takeoff aircraft; 제어계측공학; Adaptive MPC; electric virtical take-off and landing (eVTOL); tilt-transition failure control; tilt-transition control; linear parameter-varying (LPV)
• ISSN: 1598-6446; 2005-4092
• DOI: 10.1007/s12555-021-0915-1

This paper applies novel LPV (linear parameter-varying) model and MPC (model predictive control) methods to a tilt-transition process with rotor failure for electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft of six distributed electric rotors with a fixed-wing for level flight, where two rotors are tiltable to generate variable thrust vector during the tilt-transition from hovering to steady-state level flight and the rest of four cannot be tilted. During the level flight, the aerodynamic lift induced by fixed wing maintains flight altitude. Based on a predefined nominal tilting trajectory scheduled by tilt-rotor angular position and the failed rotor speed, a discrete-time LPV model is constructed based on significantly reduced number of linear time invariant models obtained by linearizing the nonlinear eVTOL aircraft model along the tilting trajectory, where tilt-rotor angle and failed rotor speed can be measured in real-time. An LPV modeling error evaluation method is proposed based on the σ shifted ℌ 2 norm, and adaptive model predictive controller is designed with the dynamic reference compensation. Simulation study indicated the success of the adaptive MPC strategy based on tilt-transition LPV model with rotor failure.