Design and Verification of Lateral Flight Control System for Fixed-wing Drone

Abstract

We study the design of the lateral flight control system for fixed-wing drones and implement it in the autopilot’s waypoints navigation and course tracking of the flight. The autopilot uses AHRS to measure the three-axis attitude for the attitude stabilization flight mode and atmospheric sensors are used as the altimeter and airspeed meter to complete the longitudinal flight control system. Autopilot uses the course angle of GPS and the aileron of the drone for lateral control. After accomplishing the attitude, longitudinal and lateral flight control systems, autopilot and drone have the autonomous flight ability to designate waypoints according to the mission. It is shown that Infineon’s TC275 multi-core processor is the main chip of autopilot and an electric glider with a wingspan of 2.6 m and a take-off weight of 3 kg is used for the autonomous flight test bed.