Design of Transition Mode Attitude Controller for a Tilt-rotor UAV Based on MPC Method

In this paper, a transition mode attitude controller based on model predictive control is designed for the mode conversion of a tilt-rotor UAV with rotor/wing interference. Firstly, a tilt-rotor UAV with five tiltrotors is introduced. Then, to realize the conversion of flight mode from rotor to fixed wing, a control framework based on hybrid control including rotor controller and fixed wing controller is proposed. In this framework, the rotor control law and the fixed wing control law are distributed according to a designed weight coefficient. Based on this, in order to effectively predict and compensate the rotor/wing interference in the process of mode conversion, the model predictive control (MPC) algorithm is used to design the rotor controller. Finally, the designed controller is applied to the dynamic model of tilt-rotor UAV with the rotor/wing interference, and the simulation is carried out in Matlab/Simulink software. The results show the effectiveness of the designed method.