Modified Non-linear PID Controller Design for Small UAV

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

MTC, Egypt.

10.21608/iugrc.2021.246571

Abstract

Fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly important in military, civil, and scientific sectors. Because of the existing nonlinearities, effective control this type of UAV remains a challenge. This paper proposes a modified proportional-integral derivative (PI-D) control system for fixed-wing UAVs where a family of PID cascade control systems is designed for several operating conditions of airspeed. The proposed modification of the PID controller based on adopting the angular rates measured by the angular gyroscopes as negative feedback instead of differentiating the desired step reference. The practical enhancement ensured from this modification due to the validity of the IMU sensor to provide the required feedback. Moreover, the anti-windup mitigation introduced by preventing background integration while saturation. The numerical simulation results confirm the reduction of the control effort using the proposed modifications.

Keywords