Nonlinear Control of a Tethered UAV: the Taut Cable case
For UAV control researchers, this provides a method to stabilize tethered UAVs under taut cable constraints, but the approach is incremental as it combines existing techniques.
This paper designs a stabilizing control law for a tethered UAV that maintains a non-zero attitude while hovering, ensuring the cable remains taut. The two-step solution uses thrust vectoring and a novel Reference Governor to guarantee constraint satisfaction.
This paper focuses on the design of a stabilizing control law for an aerial vehicle which is physically connected to a ground station by means of a tether cable. By taking advantage of the tensile force acting along the taut cable, it is shown that the tethered UAV is able to maintain a non-zero attitude while hovering in a constant position. The control objective is to stabilize the desired configuration while simultaneously ensuring that the cable remains taut at all times. This leads to a nonlinear control problem subject to constraints. This paper provides a two-step solution. First, the system is stabilized using a cascade control scheme based on thrust vectoring. Then, constraint satisfaction is guaranteed using a novel Reference Governor scheme.