Control fligth of a UAV type tricopter with fuzzy logic controller

The article is devoted to the movement study of the unmanned aerial vehicle, type tricopter, with three controllable drives, all the propellers of which are rotary. The UAV is equipped with swept wings that allow it to provide aerodynamic stability. During take-off and landing the rotors work as lifting rotors, and while moving in the horizontal plane they work as the traction ones, shifting the plane of rotation by turning the rotary propellers. For the study of convertiplane basic flight modes and stability of its movement along a predetermined path the design and mathematical models that describe spatial motion of the UAV are proposed, the differential equations of motion that describe the interconnected electromagnetic and mechanical processes in tricopter propeller drives electromechanical system are formulated. The resulting nonlinear differential equations are solved together with the kinematic relations that express the body angular velocity projection on the axis of movable coordinate system using the angular velocities of roll φ pitch ψ and yaw θ angles. The solution of nonlinear differential equations is found analytically, the simulation of the convertiplane take-off (landing) modes and its movement along a predetermined path are accomplished numerically. The method of controlling the tricopter movements using fuzzy logic controller is offered, the control system comparative analysis using proportional-integral-differential (PID) and odd controllers is done. It is found out that the use of fuzzy logic controller allows providing the aerial vehicle movements of better quality along a predetermined path in comparison with the PID controller.