Parametric model identification of delta wing UAVs using filter error method augmented with particle swarm optimisation

From arsenal delivery to rescue missions, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are playing a crucial role in various fields, which brings the need for continuous evolution of system identification techniques to develop sophisticated mathematical models for effective flight control. In this paper, a novel parameter estimation technique based on filter error method (FEM) augmented with particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is developed and implemented to estimate the longitudinal and lateral-directional aerodynamic, stability and control derivatives of fixed-wing UAVs. The FEM used in the estimation technique is based on the steady-state extended Kalman filter, where the maximum likelihood cost function is minimised separately using a randomised solution search algorithm, PSO and the proposed method is termed FEM-PSO. A sufficient number of compatible flight data sets were generated using two cropped delta wing UAVs, namely CDFP and CDRW, which are used to analyse the applicability of the proposed estimation method. A comparison has been made between the parameter estimates obtained using the proposed method and the computationally intensive conventional FEM. It is observed that most of the FEM-PSO estimates are consistent with wind tunnel and conventional FEM estimates. It is also noticed that estimates of crucial aerodynamic derivatives ${C_{{L_\alpha }}},\;{C_{{m_\alpha }}},\;{C_{{Y_\beta }}},\;{C_{{l_\beta }}}$ and ${C_{{n_\beta }}}$ obtained using FEM-PSO are having relative offsets of 2.5%, 1.5%, 6.5%, 3.4% and 7.6% w.r.t. wind tunnel values for CDFP, and 1.4%, 1.9%, 0.1%, 9.6% and 7.5% w.r.t. wind tunnel values for CDRW. Despite having slightly higher Cramer-Rao Lower Bounds of estimated aerodynamic derivatives using the FEM-PSO method, the simulated responses have a relative error of less than 0.10% w.r.t. measured flight data. A proof-of-match exercise is also conducted to ascertain the efficacy of the estimates obtained using the proposed method. The degree of effectiveness of the FEM-PSO method is comparable with conventional FEM.