In-Ground-Effect Model Based Adaptive Altitude Control of Rotorcraft Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The low-altitude operation of rotorcraft is inevitably affected by the ground effect that poses challenging issues in designing altitude controller. This letter is concerned to the altitude tracking problem for rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under the presence of the ground effect. In the light of existing in-ground-effect (IGE) models, we present adaptive altitude controllers to deal with unknown parameters in the IGE models. The controllers guarantee robust stability of the rotorcraft UAV in vertical movements, and improve the altitude track performances in close proximity to ground. Compared to the existing study, the improvement of the proposed controllers are then illustrated by several flight experiments.

Automated summary

This letter focuses on the altitude tracking problem for rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under the ground effect. Adaptive altitude controllers are proposed to deal with unknown parameters in the ground effect models. Flight experiments are conducted to illustrate the improvement of the proposed controllers compared to the existing study.