2022 Volume 70 Issue 6 Pages 197-207
In the future UAM (Urban Air Mobility) society, a wide variety of small aircraft, including drones, are cooperatively operated in urban spaces at lower altitudes. Unlike in undisturbed high-altitudes for large airliners, the UAM airspace might be atmospherically unstable, and severe turbulence like sudden crosswinds and downdrafts between buildings should be assumed. Such microclimate phenomena inherent to urban space are difficult to predict, and are a major threat to the safe operation of small lightweight aircrafts flying at low speeds. Hence, there is a great need for powerful attitude stabilization system that can back up manual control and typical SAS (Stability Augmentation System). In this study, the Flow Field Integrated Flight Control is proposed as a solution to this problem. The surface pressure field is used to obtain wind gust characteristics and improve flight stability. The feedback gain is tuned based on real-time modeling of the relationship between the aircraft motion and the surface pressure field, including the effect of turbulence. The proposed design method does not require any models in advance, such as aerodynamic model, mass properties, and turbulence models. The optimal pressure sensor location is also investigated by simulations.
