Auto-Landing Control for Moving-Mass Actuated Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper considers the control problem of precisely landing a moving-mass actuated unmanned aerial vehicle (MAUAV) to the runway. The light weight of vehicle, the severe coupling of lateral and longitudinal motions, and the peculiarities of moving-mass control all make it difficult to control the MAUAV in a stable and safe landing. Considering the above problems, airspeed, altitude and attitude controllers are designed to make the MAUAV tracks a given altitude trajectory to descend at a constant speed during the landing process. Disturbance observers are introduced in the design process of all three controllers to compensate for unknown disturbances. The proposed auto-landing method is established by numerical simulations, and the results of which demonstrate that the control strategy enables the MAUAV to accurately follow the specified altitude trajectory and eventually has a small lateral deviation relative to the final landing runway.