Control architecture for transition from level flight to hover of a fixed-wing UAV

This paper describes the control architecture for fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) which can transition from level flight to hover. The controller is designed by applying dynamic inversion method to the translational and rotational nonlinear equations of motion of a UAV. The Disturbance Accommodating Control (DAC) observer is used to estimate nonlinear terms of its rotational motion. H_∞ method is treated for rotational motion of the UAV to synthesize controllers achieving robust performance against modeling and estimating errors. In order to verify the performance of the designed control system, numerical simulation is demonstrated for the UAV.