Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines

Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines is an exposition of models developed to assist in the motion control of various types of mini-aircraft: • Planar Vertical Take-off and Landing aircraft; • helicopters; • quadrotor mini-rotorcraft; • other fixed-wing aircraft; • blimps. For each of these it propounds: • detailed models derived from Euler-Lagrange methods; • appropriate nonlinear control strategies and convergence properties; • real-time experimental comparisons of the performance of control algorithms; • review of the principal sensors, on-board electronics, real-time architecture and communications systems for mini-flying machine control, including discussion of their performance; • detailed explanation of the use of the Kalman filter to flying machine localization.  To researchers and students in nonlinear control and its applications Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines provides valuable insights to the application of real-time nonlinear techniques in an always challenging area.