GRAMIAN-AWARE CLOSED LOOP FLIGHT CONTROL DESIGN FOR ENERGY HARVESTING THROUGH MODULATING DISTURBANCE SENSITIVITY

Abstract

Many desired micro aerial vehicle missions are significantly larger than the mission endurance of the vehicles. Due to extreme constraints on size, weight and power available, small scale air vehicles are highly sensitive to atmospheric disturbance. This work introduces a control-theoretic framework that models the magnitude of the vehicle's disturbance sensitivity and observability in conjunction with each other under a gramian-based formulation. To implement atmospheric gust response modulatiom, a ``gramian-aware'' flight control law is designed using open loop plant models across various scales and assuming perfect gust measurement. Time-domain system identification was conducted using data collected from repeatable automated flights in a motion capture arena in order to derive the plant model. Closed-loop simulation results as well as experimental data modulating the plant using cruise speed are presented to illustrate that the gramian-based control laws can be utilized to facilitate atmospheric energy scavenging in gusting environments.