Feasibility study on novel tilt-wing control allocation strategy

The innochque project named "Feasibility study on novel tilt-wing control allocation strategy" aims to enhance the Dufour Aero-200 UAV flight control systems by evaluating novel control allocation methods, which improves actuator use, energy efficiency during transition flight. ZHAW will implement, benchmark, and evaluate the found strategies for the Dufour flight simulation model. By enhancing the control allocation strategy of the Flight Control System (FCS), the project aims to improve the safety and efficiency of this aircraft.

Thanks to its unique design, the Aero-200 can operate in both “helicopter” and “airplane” modes. It features a tiltable wing, five propellers (four on the wing and one on the tail), and four aerodynamic control surfaces (flaps, ailerons, elevator, and rudder), making it a highly over-actuated system with multiple redundant effectors. Because many actuator combinations can generate the same commanded moments and forces, selecting the most effective combination is a challenging and non-trivial task.

Control allocation plays the crucial role of translating the desired forces and moments, produced by the flight control laws, into actuator commands for motors and servo actuators. Current implementations typically rely on generalized-inverse solutions, which are computationally simple but often sub-optimal, especially during the transition phase. Our idea is to design, implement, and evaluate advanced control allocation strategies for the Aero-200 simulator. Specifically, we will benchmark the existing baseline against other solutions, such as:

• Optimization-based methods: minimize control error while handling actuator saturation, rate limits, and energy use (e.g. linear programming).
• Dynamic allocation methods: explicitly shape transient dynamics to improve stability during transition (e.g. eigenstructure assignment applied on the control allocation problem).
• The outcome will include a comprehensive literature review, the selection of the most promising control allocation techniques, and a comparison of performance improvements and future development directions.