Control System Design and Evaluating Influence of Aerodynamic Force in Autonomous Flight System to Create Microgravity Space

Abstract

This paper describes the development of the autonomous flight system to create microgravity space. Currently, various microgravity environments are being conducted for the development in material science and combustion science because characteristic physical phenomena occur in microgravity space. However, existing microgravity generation methods have problems that experiments are only conducted in a specific place and expensive. Therefore, development of portable and low-cost system for creating microgravity space is desired. The proposed system realizes a microgravity environment controlling acceleration by a ducted fan and attitude by a motor while dropping. The study aims to design control system using backstepping method and consider motor dynamics. Also, the robustness against the change in aerodynamic force of the flap is evaluated by numerical analysis. The result of the numerical analysis shows that the proposed system controlled by backstepping method has the robustness against the change in lift of the flap.