Title: Robotic small unmanned aerial vehicle system for disaster information gathering

Authors: Jinjun Rao, Tongyue Gao, Zhenbang Gong, Jun Luo

Addresses: Department of Precision Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai University, P.O. Box 108, Yanchang Rd. 149, Shanghai 200072, China. ' Department of Precision Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai University, P.O. Box 108, Yanchang Rd. 149, Shanghai 200072, China. ' Department of Precision Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai University, P.O. Box 108, Yanchang Rd. 149, Shanghai 200072, China. ' Department of Precision Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai University, P.O. Box 108, Yanchang Rd. 149, Shanghai 200072, China

Abstract: Small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (SUAVs) present an enormous potential for low-altitude exploration applications. In order to develop a robotic SUAV with high level of autonomy for disaster information gathering, the flight control and navigation system is presented and the hardware and software are detailed. Then the dynamic model of flight motion of SUAV is studied. As the kernel of the system, the architecture of flight control and navigation strategies are presented, then variable universe fuzzy attitude controller and mission path tracking controller are introduced in detail. The flight experiments for low altitude information gathering using this robotic SUAV are implemented and the flight results are given and analysed.

Keywords: small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles; SUAV; flight control systems; navigation; disaster information gathering; robotic UAVs; dynamic modelling; flight motion; fuzzy attitude; fuzzy control; mission path tracking; tracking control.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAMECHS.2010.030851

International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems, 2010 Vol.2 No.1/2, pp.81 - 89

Published online: 10 Jan 2010 *

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