Introduction 介绍
A variety of micro air vehicle (MAV) technologies are now available which provide the fundamental flight capabilities required for basic survey and transport tasks. These aircraft exhibit highly coupled rotational and lateral dynamics which must be taken into account in the control design and when specifying aggressive required trajectories. A popular example is the planar quadrotor, whose flight state exists in six dimensions over position and body orientation but which is equipped with only four actuators. These aircraft only have control over their attitude moment vector and the magnitude of net thrust downward in the body frame, and so they must maneuver spatially by constantly changing their orientation. As a direct consequence of this underactuation they are incapable of independently regulating both position and orientation. Furthermore, even smooth spatial trajectories can be infeasible unless they are
现在有各种微型飞行器 (MAV) 技术可用,它们提供了基本测量和运输任务所需的基本飞行能力。这些飞机表现出高度耦合的旋转和横向动力学,在控制设计和指定激进的所需轨迹时必须考虑到这一点。一个流行的例子是平面四旋翼,其飞行状态在位置和身体方向上以六个维度存在,但仅配备四个致动器。这些飞机只能控制其姿态矩矢量和机身框架中向下的净推力大小,因此它们必须通过不断改变方向来进行空间机动。作为这种驱动不足的直接后果,它们无法独立调节位置和方向。此外,即使是平滑的空间轨迹也可能是不可行的,除非它们是
Fully actuated aircraft with independent control over body forces and moments could support a multitude of new capabilities. Such aircraft would be able to apply arbitrary wrenches on the environment, making them useful for construction or object manipulation. In flight they could independently point cameras, sensors, or high gain antennas independent of motion trajectories or the wind environment. In indoor environments with humans they would able to gesture with the aircraft posture to make their motion intentions more legible to bystanders, visually indicate objects or directions as a guide, or provide visual cues to aid in human-robot task coordination. These possibilities have inspired diverse efforts to realize new types of fully actuated MAV.
独立控制身体力和力矩的完全驱动飞机可以支持多种新功能。这种飞机将能够对环境使用任意扳手,使其可用于构造或对象操作。在飞行中,它们可以独立于运动轨迹或风环境独立指向相机、传感器或高增益天线。在有人类的室内环境中,他们能够用飞机的姿势做手势,使旁观者更容易理解他们的运动意图,以视觉方式指示物体或方向作为指导,或提供视觉提示以帮助人机任务协调。这些可能性激发了各种努力,以实现新型的完全驱动 MAV。
Many previous embodiments of fully actuated, holonomic, or omnidirectional MAV are conceptually inspired by the quadrotor and proceed by adding additional actuators. By configuring six conventional rigid rotors with their orientations canted out of plane it is possible to obtain independent control over forces and moments in proximity to hover, but the inability to reverse independent rotor thrust directions limit feasible forces and therefore feasible stable orientations [1], [2]. With seven unidirectional rotors it becomes in principle possible to hover in all orientations, even upside down [3]. Incorporating eight variable-direction rotors allows practical flight in all orientations and would potentially permit control strategies which avoid driving motors at low speeds or with rapid direction changes [4]. Similar capabilities in six-rotor configurations become possible with high performance reversing motor drivers [5].
许多先前的完全驱动、全息或全向 MAV 的实施例在概念上都受到四旋翼的启发,并通过添加额外的致动器进行。通过配置六个传统的刚性旋翼,使其方向倾斜出平面,可以独立控制靠近悬停的力和力矩,但无法反转独立的旋翼推力方向限制了可行的力,因此限制了可行的稳定方向 [1] 。 [2] 使用七个单向转子,原则上可以在所有方向上悬停,甚至 倒置 [3] .包含八个可变向旋翼允许在所有方向上进行实际飞行,并可能允许使用控制策略,避免以低速或快速改变 [4] 方向驱动电机。高性能换向电机驱动器 [5] 可以在六转子配置中实现类似的功能。
Coaxial helicopters offer a different point of departure for developing fully actuated aircraft. One technique is to vector the thrust of top and bottom rotors by reorienting the entire motor and rotor assembly using gimbals driven by additional pitch and roll servomotors. In static bench testing, [6] demonstrated that the resulting six-actuator system can obtain authority over net forces and moments. Alternatively, a pair of conventional swashplates and teetering rotors can be driven by four roll and pitch servos to tilt the rotor tip path plane and achieve a similar effect. Conventional flight capabilities using this technique were obtained by [7], but novel maneuvers unique to fully actuated MAV were not deeply explored. Both types of coaxial aircraft have an efficiency advantage over the aforementioned multirotors in that all of the rotor thrust can be directed downwards when in hover. However, each still require a minimum of six actuators for operation.
同轴直升机为开发全驱动飞机提供了不同的出发点。一种技术是通过使用由额外的变桨和滚转伺服电机驱动的万向节重新定向整个电机和转子组件来矢量化顶部和底部转子的推力。在静态台架测试中, [6] 证明了所得到的六作动缸系统可以获得对净力和力矩的权威。或者,一对传统的斜盘和摇摇欲坠的转子可以由四个滚动和俯仰伺服系统驱动,以倾斜转子尖端路径平面并实现类似的效果。使用这种技术的常规飞行能力是通过 [7] 获得的,但尚未深入探索完全驱动 MAV 独有的新型机动。与上述多旋翼飞机相比,这两种类型的同轴飞机都具有效率优势,因为在悬停时,所有旋翼推力都可以向下引导。但是,每个驱动器仍然需要至少 6 个执行器才能运行。
This paper introduces a new coaxial helicopter which emulates fully actuated aircraft using only two actuators. We do this by taking advantage of recent methods for controlling a flapping rotor's tip path plane by exciting a dynamic response to modulated shaft torques from the primary drive motor [8], [9]. Section II describes the idealized vehicle dynamics in terms of vectored thrusts derived from tilting top and bottom rotor tip path planes. Our method for controlling the tip path plane response without auxiliary actuators is described in Section III along with measurements of the individual rotor capabilities. The vehicle hardware design is summarized in Section IV, and the control architecture is described in Section V. Flight results in Section VI demonstrate decoupled lateral and rotational dynamics, confirming that this two-actuator MAV emulates the primary capabilities of a six-actuator, fully actuated MAV. This includes sustaining a stationary hover while pitching the aircraft up to 8°, and tracking trajectories with discontinuous accelerations up to 1 m/s2 without pitching or rolling. We conclude by identifying areas for improvement and future work.
本文介绍了一种新型同轴直升机,它仅使用两个致动器即可模拟完全驱动的飞机。我们利用最新的方法,通过激发对主驱动电机的调制轴扭矩的动态响应来控制扑动转子的尖端路径平面 [8],[9]。第二节描述了理想化的飞行器动力学,即从倾斜的顶部和底部转子尖端路径平面得出的矢量推力。第 III 节描述了我们在没有辅助促动器的情况下控制尖端路径平面响应的方法,以及各个转子能力的测量。第四节总结了车辆硬件设计,第五节描述了控制架构。第六节的飞行结果展示了解耦的横向和旋转动力学,证实了这款双致动器 MAV 模拟了六致动器、完全致动 MAV 的主要功能。这包括在将飞机俯仰至 8° 时保持静止悬停,以及以高达 1 m/s2 的不连续加速度跟踪轨迹,而不俯仰或滚动。最后,我们确定了需要改进的领域和未来的工作。
Idealized Vehicle Dynamics
理想化的车辆动力学
The vehicle dynamics can be approximated by considering a coaxial helicopter capable of tilting the direction of thrust from each rotor away from vertical. This thrust vectoring effect could conventionally be obtained from teetering rotors equipped with cyclic blade pitch control actuators. Our unique method for controlling the blade response using only the main drive torque will be examined in Section III, but first we address a generic thrust vectoring idealization. Figure 1 depicts one rotor mounted a distance
可以通过考虑一架同轴直升机来近似计算,该直升机能够将每个旋翼的推力方向从垂直方向倾斜。这种推力矢量效应通常可以通过配备循环叶片变桨控制致动器的摇摇晃晃的旋翼获得。第三节将介绍我们仅使用主驱动扭矩控制叶片响应的独特方法,但首先我们讨论通用的推力矢量理想化。图 1 描述了一个安装在质心上方一段距离
Equation 1 develops the net force
方程 1 将围绕飞机质心的合力
The constant coefficient matrix has a determinant of
常数系数矩阵的行列式为
Implementation of Thrust Vectoring
推力矢量的实现
Thrust vectoring for control through tilting of the tip path plane can be implemented without adding any additional actuators beyond the top and bottom drive motors themselves. In previous work it has been shown that a single motor can control both the mean operating speed and cyclic blade pitch variation of a rotor by modulating the applied drive torque [8]. Two blades are attached to a hub with skewed lag-pitch hinges, as shown in Fig. 2. Modulating the motor torque sinusoidally at one-per-rev excites a synchronous lead-lag motion in each blade within the plane of rotation. The skewed lag-pitch hinge couples this lag oscillation into a blade pitch oscillation. The two blades are mounted on asymmetric hinges so that one has a positive lag-pitch coupling and the other a negative lag-pitch coupling. As a result a one-per-rev sinusoidal modulation in motor torque causes the blades to pitch 180° out of phase with each other, phase locked with the rotor rotation. By controlling the amplitude and phase of the motor torque the amplitude and azimuthal phase of the blade pitch can be controlled. The aircraft in [8] is capable of attitude control like a standard quadrotor or helicopter and maneuvers by taking advantage net direct hub moments arising when, for example, both blades cyclically pass across the aircraft nose at minimum pitch and lift but pass across the tail at maximum pitch and lift.
通过倾斜尖端路径平面进行控制,无需在顶部和底部驱动电机本身之外添加任何其他致动器即可实现推力矢量。在以前的工作中已经表明,单个电机可以通过调制施加的驱动扭矩 [8] 来控制转子的平均运行速度和循环叶片螺距变化。两个叶片通过倾斜的 Lag-Pitch 铰链连接到轮毂上,如 所示。 Fig. 2 以每转 1 的速度正弦调制电机扭矩,会激发旋转平面内每个叶片的同步超前滞后运动。倾斜的滞后-螺距铰链将这种滞后振荡耦合成叶片螺距振荡。两个叶片安装在不对称的铰链上,因此一个叶片具有正滞后-螺距耦合,另一个具有负滞后-螺距耦合。因此,电机扭矩的每转 1 正弦调制导致叶片彼此异相 180°,与转子旋转锁相。通过控制电机扭矩的幅度和相位,可以控制叶片俯仰的幅度和方位相位。该 [8] 飞机能够像标准四旋翼或直升机一样进行姿态控制,并利用产生的净直接轮毂力矩进行机动,例如,两个叶片以最小俯仰和升力周期性地穿过飞机机头,但在最大俯仰和升力下穿过尾部。
Independent offset flap hinges were added in [9] to allow each blade to individually flap up and down during each revolution in response to changing blade pitches and the resulting blade lift. In addition to direct moments on the hub, this causes an apparent tilting of the tip path plane and redirection of the thrust vector.
添加了独立的偏置襟翼铰链 [9] ,以允许每个叶片在每次旋转期间单独上下摆动,以响应不断变化的叶片间距和由此产生的叶片升程。除了轮毂上的直接力矩外,这会导致尖端路径平面的明显倾斜和推力矢量的重定向。
The operational principle depicted in Fig. 1 benefits from large flapping angles and a pure thrust vectoring effect with no direct moments applied to the hub, properties which neither of the rotor designs in [8] or [9] achieve. This is now obtained by incorporating a single, central teetering hinge as seen in Figs. 2 and 3. For each degree of cyclic blade pitch authority a teetering rotor enjoys one degree of flap and tip path plane inclination, and the thrust force may be thought of as remaining perpendicular to this tip path plane. At the same time, no direct torques can be transfered to the hub through the teetering hinge.
其中 Fig. 1 描述的工作原理受益于大的扑动角和纯粹的推力矢量效应,没有直接的力矩施加到轮毂上,这是两个旋翼都没有设计 [8] 或 [9] 实现的特性。现在,这是通过合并一个中央摇摇欲坠的铰链来实现的,如 Figs. 2 和 3 所示。对于每度循环叶片俯仰授权,摇摇欲坠的旋翼享有一度的襟翼和尖端路径平面倾斜,推力可以被认为是保持垂直于该尖端路径平面。同时,没有直接扭矩可以通过摇晃铰链传递到轮毂。
The change in blade flap angle
叶片襟翼角
The motor torques driving the gross propeller rotation as well as the cyclic blade pitch and flapping response are a result of modulating the applied motor voltage. The applied voltage
驱动螺旋桨总旋转以及循环叶片俯仰和扑动响应的电机扭矩是调制施加的电机电压的结果。施加的电压
Previous dynamical modeling and experimental validation of similar rotors in [9] motivates a useful approximation for the flap response in terms of the applied voltage modulation. The flap response in
先前对类似转子 [9] 的动力学建模和实验验证激发了在施加电压调制方面对襟翼响应的有用近似。的襟翼响应 中的
Hardware Design 硬件设计
The flight vehicle is shown in Fig. 4, incorporating two counter-rotating propeller systems which are depicted in Fig. 3. The rotors are 32 cm in diameter, and are driven to a trim hover speed of approximately 370 rad/s by two size 2212 BLDC motors. The rotor blades are commercial symmetric airfoils attached to custom 3D printed hub pieces which are joined by steel pin hinges with PTFE plastic washers added to reduce friction. The full aircraft mass is 380 g, with the center of mass approximately equidistant between the two rotors which are themselves 16 cm apart.
飞行 Fig. 4 器如 所示,包括两个反向旋转的螺旋桨系统,如 Fig. 3 所示。转子直径为 32 厘米,由两台 2212 型 BLDC 电机驱动至约 370 rad/s 的配平悬停速度。转子叶片是商业对称翼型,连接到定制的 3D 打印轮毂件上,这些轮毂件由钢销铰链连接,并添加了 PTFE 塑料垫圈以减少摩擦。飞机的全质量为 380 g,两个旋翼之间的质心大约相等,这两个旋翼本身相距 16 cm。
A commercial flight controller using the PX4 autopilot software [10] runs an attitude tracking control law to generate desired body moments
使用 PX4 自动驾驶仪软件 [10] 的商用飞行控制器运行姿态跟踪控制律以生成所需的身体力矩
The custom motor controller is responsible for applying drive voltage
定制电机控制器负责 根据所需参数
During bench testing the rotor was operated at 370 rad/s, obtaining a thrust of 2.9 N. Figure 5 shows the obtained angular deflection of the thrust vector due to blade flapping as determined by measuring the lateral forces generated. These angles agree closely with a visual observation of the tip path plane. A maximum deflection of 10° in the force vector was obtained, corresponding to a lateral force of 0.5 N.
在台架测试期间,转子以 370 rad/s 的速度运行,获得 2.9 N 的推力, Figure 5 显示由于叶片拍动而获得的推力矢量角偏转,这是通过测量产生的横向力确定的。这些角度与尖端路径平面的目视观察非常吻合。在力矢量中获得的最大挠度为 10°,对应于 0.5 N 的侧向力。
Control Design 控制设计
Trajectory tracking control for a conventional underactu-ated quadrotor might proceed as illustrated in Fig. 6 using cascaded position and attitude controllers. A reference spatial trajectory
传统欠驱动四旋翼飞行器的轨迹跟踪控制可以按照使用级联位置和姿态控制器中的 Fig. 6 说明进行。将参考空间轨迹
In contrast, the updated control architecture in Fig. 7 takes advantage of the fully actuated capabilities of the new aircraft. The desired orientation
相比之下,更新后的控制架构 Fig. 7 利用了新飞机的完全驱动功能。所需的方向
Flight Experiments
Three different flight experiments were conducted to demonstrate full actuation of aircraft moments and forces, separation of rotational and translational dynamics, and the impact of actuator limitations on the available flight envelope. In each flight the aircraft tracks a time parameterized trajectory in simultaneous orientation and position. The attitude tracking controller and actuator control allocation are performed on the aircraft using onboard sensor information. The position controller is implemented on a ground based laptop which makes use of absolute position and heading information available from a motion capture system. The resulting force commands sent to the vehicle reflect both proportional-derivative action and the reference acceleration of the target trajectory.
A. Orientation Control in Hover
In the first experiment the aircraft ascends to a stable hover at position
This test demonstrates the maximum pitch angle at which the vehicle can remain stationary. At larger pitch angles there is insufficient flapping authority to avoid accelerating in the direction of the aircraft pitch. Since this experiment establishes that the vehicle can produce 0.5 N lateral force in hover, one might expect a theoretical maximum lateral acceleration of 1.3 m/s2 even while maintaining perfect level pitch, which is analogous to the acceleration of a quadrotor pitched over at 8°.
B. Acceleration Without Pitch or Roll
The experiment described in Fig. 9 demonstrates tracking a trajectory which would be very challenging for an under-actuated quadrotor to execute accurately. Furthermore, the aircraft maintains a level attitude throughout the maneuver which would be impossible for a quadrotor. From rest in hover, the commanded lateral acceleration steps instantaneously to
C. Smooth Trajectory Following
Many apparently smooth trajectories which might be desired by camera operators or generated by spline methods are likewise difficult for an underactuated MAV to execute cleanly. Figures 10 and 11 show the MAV flying at 0.5 m/s and then entering tangentially into a circular path of radius 35 cm. Upon entry into the circle, the required acceleration jumps from 0 m/s2 to 0.7m/s2. Then as the circle is tracked while maintaining heading in the
Conclusion
This work presents the design and flight testing of a coaxial helicopter with only two actuators which can emulate the capabilities of a fully actuated MAV. Unlike a conventional underactuated quadrotor this MAV enjoys independent control over the body moment and force vectors, making it possible to hover in non-upright orientations or accelerate laterally without pitching or rolling the aircraft. Similar capabilities in the past have only been achieved using a total of six or more actuators. Experiments demonstrate the ability to maintain a stationary hover while pitched at up to 8°, as well as the ability to accelerate laterally at 1 m/s2 without pitching or rolling. Since the aerodynamic force is directed by fast rotor flapping dynamics instead of relying on changing the attitude of the entire aircraft, even smooth trajectories with discontinuous required accelerations can be tracked with a high degree of fidelity.
Existing platforms overcome the limitations of underactu-ated flight dynamics by adding articulated subsystems. Conventional quadrotors can not fully control their body wrench, but they can be equipped with a dexterous manipulator to apply wrenches to grasped objects. The view from a rigidly mounted camera suffers uncontrollable rolling and pitching during flight maneuvers, but cameras can be mounted on multi-axis gimbals. Embedding these capabilities directly into the flight platform itself may allow for lighter, cheaper and more robust MAV.
Future work will focus on increasing the angle of thrust vectoring available from each rotor. This will expand the permissible orientations for hover and increase the feasible lateral forces and accelerations for tracking trajectories or rejecting wind disturbances. The aerodynamic interaction between the rotors has been ignored in the present work. Modeling these effects may inform the design of the top and bottom rotors for improved aerodynamic efficiency or suggest modified command allocations for more accurately generating desired forces and moments. Finally, we have considered only the situation where both aircraft orientation and path are simultaneously prescribed. Returning to the classic problem of tracking aggressive spatial trajectories, we may consider how to optimally exploit both the free attitude dynamics and force vectoring capabilities subject to actuator constraints.