Practical near hover flight control of a ducted fan (SLADe)

The development of a near hover flight control system for an electrically powered, coaxial, counter-rotating ducted fan aircraft (SLADe—surface launched aerial decoy) is presented. The control and estimation algorithms are designed to operate with low-cost sensors, be computationally efficient, robust and easily adaptable from flight test data. Successive loop closure is employed in the controller design with feedback signals from linear decoupled estimators. Simulation results verify the controller functionality and show that the decoupled estimators perform well near hover when compared to a coupled nonlinear 16 state Kalman filter. Flight test results are presented that verify the practical success of the autopilot.