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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 95 - Salt Lake City - March 2005
Agenda Location	9 SUBCOMMITTEE C - AVIONICS AND SYSTEM 9.1 Flight Control for Organic Air Vehicles
Title	Flight Control for Organic Air Vehicles
Presenter	Dale Enns
Affiliation	Honeywell
Available Downloads*	presentation
	Downloads are available to members who are logged in and either Active* or attended this meeting.
Abstract	The Organic Air Vehicle (OAV) is a ducted fan unmanned aerial vehicle that can hover and maneuver to provide camera images to a soldier on a ground station. It is organic in the sense that it is an asset of a small group of soldiers. The vehicle is flown both autonomously and with operator in the loop in adverse weather including wind disturbances. Vehicle attitude is controlled with control vanes in the exit of the duct and engine throttle and attitude commands are used to control vehicle position and camera heading. Sensors include 3 rate gyros, 3 accelerometers in a MEMS inertial measurement unit, GPS, barometric altimeter, magnetometer, and engine rpm. The control law is an application of Multi-Application Control (MACH), which is a reusable dynamic inversion control law that is parameterized with control system requirements and vehicle data including the vehicle mass properties, aerodynamic and propulsion, and reference geometry. The control law for OAV consists of four nested inner to outer loops (rate, attitude, velocity, position). We use proportional plus integral compensation in all of the loops. For operator in the loop flight, the control law tracks commands for velocity and camera heading rate. For autonomous flight the vehicle tracks position commands based on waypoints. The control system is linearized and obligatory stability and stability margins analyses are conducted. Simulations of closed loop behavior including trajectory commands, sensor errors, and wind disturbances have been conducted. The vehicle closed loop performance was verified in flight and shown to be consistent with simulations and analyses. These flights included hover and low speed testing while tethered and free flights (off-tether) where larger duration, range, altitude and speed conditions were evaluated. Demonstration flights were accomplished at Ft. Benning, Georgia where the OAV flew and collected video imagery from around the McKenna Military Operations in Urban Terrain site.