Simulation and Control System Design for Autonomous Gliding to a Given Location

Abstract: The aim of this project was to design a flightcontrol system with the purpose of safely guiding a glidertoward a given GPS location over a distance of at least 50km. More specifically, the aim was to develop a control systemfor autonomous gliding and implement it on a given data hubcontaining sensors, GPS-module, microcontroller and a FieldProgrammable Gate Array (FPGA). A SIMULINK simulationenvironment has been developed for simulating flight dynamicsand the digital implementation of some of the on-board hardware.The simulation environment also serves as a platform to tunecontrollers and implement most of the necessary logic forthe control system. For the reference heading, a trigonometricformula is used along with latitude/longitude coordinates tocalculate the turn-angle necessary to travel along the shortestpath between two points. Four negative feedback control loopsare used to track the reference heading and achieve maximumglide ratio. The project has been conducted with mixed success,where the implementation part of the project has suffered greatdrawbacks mainly due to problems in developing the simulationenvironment. In spite of this, the open loop simulation outputspromising results where the glider behaves as expected and isconsidered realistic enough to be a suitable environment in whichto develop a flight control system. In addition, given that thegliders geometry offers reasonable aerodynamic stability, it isshown in this thesis that the proposed control system architectureand heading reference system is sufficient to steer the glider tothe given location under calm atmospheric conditions.