Analysis of direct thrust and aerodynamic force blended control for a saucer-shaped UAV

To meet the increasing need of aviation, lifting body aircrafts have been widely used. However, this kind of aircraft usually has no vertical fin and rudder which makes it has bad lateral maneuverability. In this paper, our research object is a saucer-shaped Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) which can be adequately modeled with a rigid 6-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) representation. Two direct thrust nozzles are installed on this UAV to provide yaw moment. Attainable moment set (AMS) method is used to analysis the attainable moment of this UAV. Therefore, a direct thrust and aerodynamic force blended control strategy is proposed to control this UAV with direct thrust nozzles. Compared with traditional controller, this method can improve the lateral maneuverability and response speed. The simulation results show that this blended control strategy is a good way to deal with the control problem of lifting body UAVs and also can be used in other control systems.