Journal Article

Enhancement of Drones’ Control and Guidance Systems Channels: A Review

Ouf Abdulrahman Shams, Mustafa Abdul Salam Mustafa, Muna Hameed Alturaihi, Hasan Shakir Majdi

2023

Overview

This paper describes a system and technique for controlling the attitude and direction of a quadrotor vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicle (VTOL UAV) using a horizontal thrust system (horizontal thruster), and hereby we call the system “Thruster Quad-rotor”. The thruster quad-rotor operates by adjusting the rotational speed of each rotor's propellers to hold the quad-rotor’s attitude (angular orientation and linear position in flight), while simultaneously control all direction horizontal motions in the horizontal plane using four thrusters installed on each arm of the quad-rotor. Each rotor is attached to an arm “tube”. At the arm, on the tip, there is a thruster (electric duct fan - EDF). The four arms of the quad rotor are connected to the central body and aligned symmetrically at 45-degree angles to the X and Y axes forming a quad-rotor with “X” configuration. The horizontal thrusters enhance the effectiveness of the quad-rotor with novel design modifications; specifically, the horizontal thrusters increase the typical under-actuation to conventional quad-rotors. The application of the novel thruster concept leads to an increase in maneuvering of the UAV and an ability to resist winds and fly in tight spaces and scenarios, which presents flight’s mission limitations. This paper will include the practicality of this new system, its conceptual and design aspects, and the mathematical modeling of the channels for the new UAV's enhanced control and guidance system.

• Publisher: International Information and Engineering Technology Association (IIETA)
• Subject: Aviation / Drones / Energy consumption / Mathematical models / Simulation / Surveillance / Unmanned aerial vehicles / Vehicles