Problems in the motion control of aircraft are of perennial interest to the control engineer as they tend to be of complex and nonlinear nature.

Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines is an exposition of models developed for various types of mini-aircraft:

. planar Vertical Take-off and Landing aircraft;

. helicopters; . quadrotor mini-rotorcraft; . other fixed-wing aircraft;

. blimps. For each of these it propounds:

. detailed models derived from Euler-Lagrange methods;

. appropriate nonlinear control strategies and convergence properties;

. real-time experimental comparisons of the performance of control algorithms;

. review of the principal sensors, on-board electronics, real-time architecture and communications systems for mini-flying machine control, including discussion of their performance;

. detailed explanation of the use of the Kalman filter to flying machine localization. To researchers and students in nonlinear control and its applications Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines provides valuable insights to the application of real-time nonlinear techniques in an always challenging area.

Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.

Autorentext

Rogelio Lozano has worked in worked at a number of institutions with a high reputation for control engineering the University of Newcastle in Australia, Nasa's Langley Research Center and now as CNRS Research Director at the University of Compiègne. He is a very experienced author in the control field being an associate editor of both Automatica and International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing. He is the co-author of 3 previous titles for Springer all of them in the Communications and Control Engineering series:

Landau, I.D., Lozano, R. and M'Saad, M. Adaptive Control (1997) 3-540-76187-X

Lozano, R., Brogliato, B., Egeland, O. and Maschke, B. Dissipative Systems Analysis and Control (1999) 1-85233-285-9

Fantoni, I. and Lozano, R. Non-linear Control for Underactuated Mechanical Systems (2001) 1-85233-423-1

Zusammenfassung

Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines is an exposition of models developed to assist in the motion control of various types of mini-aircraft:

• Planar Vertical Take-off and Landing aircraft;

• helicopters;

• quadrotor mini-rotorcraft; • other fixed-wing aircraft; • blimps. For each of these it propounds: • detailed models derived from Euler-Lagrange methods; • appropriate nonlinear control strategies and convergence properties;

• real-time experimental comparisons of the performance of control algorithms;

• review of the principal sensors, on-board electronics, real-time architecture and communications systems for mini-flying machine control, including discussion of their performance;

• detailed explanation of the use of the Kalman filter to flying machine localization.

To researchers and students in nonlinear control and its applications Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines provides valuable insights to the application of real-time nonlinear techniques in an always challenging area.

Inhalt
and Historical Background.- The PVTOL Aircraft.- The Quad-rotor Rotorcraft.- Robust Prediction-based Control for Unstable Delay Systems.- Modelling and Control of Mini-helicopters.- Helicopter in a Vertical Flying Stand.- Modelling and Control of a Tandem-Wing Tail-Sitter UAV.- Modelling and Control of Small Autonomous Airships.- Sensors, Modems and Microcontrollers for UAVs.