23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-5.6.3

DESIGN OF A SHIPBOARD RECOVERY SYSTEM FOR A SHROUDED-FAN UAV

G. Avanzini (1), G. De Matteis (2)
(1) Politecnico di Torino, Italy; (2) University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy

Keywords: uav, automated ship landing, rotary wing

An automatic ship recovery system for a lightweight, shrouded fan Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is presented. The guidance and control functions are specifically designed for robust and computationally efficient operation of the flight control system of a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) platform that provides three-dimensional mobility to dedicated sensorsand payload. Automatic recovery in the presence of ship deck motion is realized by a trajectory generation and tracking algorithm, where (i) a sub-optimal flight path is generated off-line, in order to determine a feasible trajectory in the ship-fixed reference frame, and (ii) an inverse simulation algorithm provides in real time the attitude angles and vertical velocity commands to the augmented vehicle dynamical model. The performance of the system is analyzed and tested using computer based simulation.

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