The UAV Research Facility conducts research in technologies that enable autonomous operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Georgia Tech Aerial Robotics is a group of volunteers who participate in the annual International Aerial Robotics Competition

Current projects deal with theoretical and experimental investigation of highly complex, and uncertain aerospace and mechanical systems

The Active Side Stick Carefree Maneuvring Laboratory

AVOCET is a five-year MURI Program focusing on closed-loop flow control to achieve rapid, dynamic maneuvering and attitude control for small scale UAVs. Control moments are induced by dynamically tailoring the surface pressure distribution using hybrid fluidic actuators. Adaptive control law designs are based on low-order models of the vorticity dynamics, and will compensate for unmodelled dynamics using surface-mounted pressure and flow direction (micro-tuft) sensors that will enable distributed sensing of flow conditions near the lifting surface.

This project deals with the augmentation of existing controllers with an adaptive element.

The Active-Vision Control Systems for complex adversarial 3-D environments is a Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI). It is a joint effort sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Development of the GTMax Unmanned Helicopter

Develop novel control algorithms and software architectures required to make UAVs more robust and autonomous

To demonstrate the ability of a single adaptive autopilot to provide adequate control and performance for a family of guided munitions using only an approximate aero data set, and do so without using gain-scheduling.

Work Performed by Guided Systems Technologies / Georgia Tech / Boeing Co under USAF SBIR contract

Links

• Federation of American Scientists
• JDAM at Boeing

Adaptive control for a civilian tilt rotor

In 2000, the American Helicopter Society requested a proposal for the design of a rotorcraft for the exploration of the planet Mars. The RFP called for 3 entries, Airframe design, Propulsion and Flight Controls. The reports below describe the 3 entries to this International Graduate Design Competition. The Flight Control and Propulsion designs won 1st place whereas the Air Vehcile design took 2nd place.

Project to develop reconfigurable flight control laws for a tailless advanced fighter aircraft, and demonstrate their value in mitigating the effect of failures and/or battle damage.

Many spacecraft systems have ambitious objectives that place stringent requirements in terms of pointing and vibration control systems. A control design procedure is developed based on mixed H2/Hinf optimization which is used to design a set of controllers which explicitly trade between nominal performance and robust stability. A homotopy algorithm is presented which generates a trajectory of gains along the boundary which trades between robustness and performance.

Synthesis of Mixed and Fixed Robust Controllers