Position Control in Simulated Airplanes

Authors

Abstract

A simulation method for simplified planes that relies on describing the plane as a set of discrete parts is described and used in the development of an attitude and position controller. The attitude controller uses two Proportional, Integral and derivative (PID) controllers for the pitching and rolling movements of the plane. The two controllers were optimized simultaneously using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) at- tempting to minimize error and control variance. proportional controllers were found to be the best in balancing minimal error and control variance. A position controller was developed making use of the mentioned PID’s in a cascade control architecture. The position controller was also optimized using PSO and was capable of following a trajectory made of four way-points spread out several kilometres apart.

Keywords

Aircraft, Aircraft simulation, Atmospheric modeling, Attitude control, Drag, Force, Mathematical model, Optimization, Particle swarm optimization, PID control, position control

Conference

2019 International Young Engineers Forum (YEF-ECE) 2019

DOI