Incremental Control System Design and Flight Tests of a Micro-Coaxial Rotor UAV

Abstract: In this paper, the incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) method is applied to the control system design of coaxial rotor UAVs. The aerodynamic uncertainty and anti-disturbance problems are solved in the control system design. The designed controller gives the UAV excellent flight performance and control robustness. An incremental gain method (IGM) is proposed for the delay problem of the state derivative. This method has the advantages of less calculation load and simple parameter adjustment, which provides excellent convenience for applying INDI controllers to coaxial rotor UAVs. The principle of IGM is demonstrated by the stability analysis method of the discrete system, and the parameter selection strategy of the IGM is analyzed in detail by simulation. The advantages of the controller design method are verified by comparative flight tests of nonlinear dynamic inversion (NDI) and INDI. The experimental results show that the average trajectory tracking error of INDI is only 58.3% of that of NDI under the same wind speed. When the angular acceleration delay is less than 0.06 s, IGM can easily keep the system stable. In addition, INDI has better robustness under obvious model errors and strong input disturbance.