Bio-Inspired Neural Adaptive Control of a Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based on Airflow Sensors

Inspired by the exceptional flight ability of birds and insects, a bio-inspired neural adaptive flight control structure of a small unmanned aerial vehicle was presented. Eight pressure sensors were elaborately installed in the leading-edge area of the forward wing. A back propagation neural network...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zijun Ren, Wenxing Fu, Supeng Zhu, Binbin Yan, Jie Yan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2018-09-01
Series:Sensors
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/10/3233
Description
Summary:Inspired by the exceptional flight ability of birds and insects, a bio-inspired neural adaptive flight control structure of a small unmanned aerial vehicle was presented. Eight pressure sensors were elaborately installed in the leading-edge area of the forward wing. A back propagation neural network was trained to predict the aerodynamic moment based on pressure measurements. The network model was trained, validated, and tested. An adaptive controller was designed based on a radial basis function neural network. The new adaptive laws guaranteed the boundedness of the adaptive parameters. The closed-loop stability was analyzed via Lyapunov theory. The simulation results demonstrated the robustness of the bio-inspired flight control system when subjected to measurement noise, parametric uncertainties, and external disturbance.
ISSN:1424-8220