Development of Control Law for MALE UAV with Autonomous Take-off and Landing

This seminar presents a systematic methodology for the design of flight control laws for Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAV operating at high altitudes, including the development of control law for fully autonomous take-off and landing operations. The process begins by developing a detailed model of the aircraft, incorporating parameters such as mass, inertia, aerodynamic characteristics, centre of gravity variation, and propulsion data. These models are employed for both linear and nonlinear analyses, including trim calculations across

the entire flight envelope up to 30,000 ft. They also account for endurance at moderate altitudes exceeding 20 hours, incorporating engine performance degradation above 23,000 ft. To ensure practical performance, the model includes a lumped delay, actuator dynamics, and sensor model. Control laws are then designed around central and extreme trim conditions, following military-grade stability margins. The control law design involves the adaptation of classical proportional derivative and integral (PID) control and the proposal of decoupled incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (DINDI) as a modern alternative. The control law is tested through various simulation stages. These include model-in-the-loop (MIL) testing and Monte Carlo simulations with disturbances like turbulence and wind gusts. Once verified, the controller is tested as hardware in a hardware-in-the-loop simulation, followed by flight trials. This workflow ensures the resulting control laws are both reliable and adaptable, making them suitable for modern UAV missions in dynamic, real conditions. In the future, the control system undergoes flight envelope expansion