Electric Vertical-Take-Off-and-Landing aircraft has been emerging as a revolutionary transportation mode. This paper describes a system-level multiphysical model of a multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle and uses this model optimal control in a flight operation. The model considers aerodynamics of the rotor-propeller assembly, electro-mechanical dynamics of the motor and motor controller, and rigid-body dynamics of the vehicle, as control based on a system-level model incorporating all these dynamics and their coupling is missing in literature. A forward flight operation is considered for time-optimal and energy-optimal control, as well as battery voltages of 25 V and 21 V. It is found that the energy-optimal control reduced the energy required for the operation by 38.5% as compared to the time-optimal control at 25 V, while reducing the battery voltage increases the minimum operation time by 19.8%. An analysis of the energy-optimal cruise velocity is also provided.


Optimal Control of a Multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based on a Multiphysical Model

Division / Sponsors: 
Dynamic Systems & Control (DSCD)

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/DSCC/DSCC2020/volume/84270

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