I. IntroductionII. HistoryIII. Current UAVsIV. ControlsThis section looks at only three sets of the many controls involved in the flight of an aircraft, but these three sets of controls; roll, pitch, and yaw; are fundamental to stable flight. The following figure shows the orientation of parameters used in the controls developed in this document.A. RollB. PitchC. IntegrationV. Future of uavsVI. Challenges to the industryVII. Solutions to industry challengesVIII. ConclusionIX. AcknowledgmentX. ReferencesXI. BiographyAbstract-- Many people have flown at some point of their life,and most of them haven’t been the pilot when they flew. Whatoften happens is that the pilot is taken for granted and thepassengers don’t realize how much time has been put intolearning to fly the aircraft. It turns out that the most expensivepart of commercial flight is the pilot. One way this can beavoided would be to design aircraft that are capable of flyingwithout a pilot. To do so accurate controls would have to bedeveloped to handle the basic turning directions of aircraft.This paper looks at the development of controls functions for themanagement of the roll, pitch, and yaw of an aircraft. Thisprocess can be used as an example for developing andsimulating controls for other aspects of aircraft flight. Thecontrol loop for roll, in its simplest forms can be simulated usingMATLAB and Simulink. These simulations are demonstrated inthis document.I. INTRODUCTIONOne of the best things engineering has going for it is theimpatience of humans. It is this impatience that can bethanked for having airplanes within three years of havingautomobiles. Following on this note from a century ago, Iwould like to take the latest advancements of the automotiveindustry and try to apply them to air travel. What is proposedin this paper is having completely automated flight. The ideais to lay the groundwork for flying large jets without the useof a pilot. This would mean fully controlled systems thatmake decisions based on sensors in the aircraft. Thisdocument discusses why civilian flight without pilots ispossible, and will happen soon, and it outlines the basiccontrols of aircraft that will be needed to bring about theserealities.II. HISTORYThe airplane was first flown in 1904, just three years afterHenry Ford had completed the first motorized carriage. Thisfirst flight was only seconds long and greatly aided by thewind that day, but it was only five years later that the Wrightbrothers were able to fly for half an hour and fly in controlledfigure eight patterns in a demonstration for a militarycontract. By the summer of 1914 Lawrence Sperry haddeveloped an autopilot system [2]. The advances in “heavierthan air flight vehicles” were put together in 1917 to createthe first unmanned aircraft, a crude motorized bomb [6].This rapid advancement has continued ever since. The use ofUnmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) was evident in theVietnam War, where 544 of them went down [4], and this wasonly a fraction of the 3000 plus UAVs put to use in the war[1]. As can be noted by the past uses of unmanned aircraft,its development has been done mainly by militaries, mostlythe United States’. This is still the case today with a fewexceptions: there are some unmanned aircraft used forgathering weather data and some done purely for fun andscientific advancement. III. CURRENT UAVSThe advances of the past century have led to the UAVs thatcurrently exist. Today, unmanned aircraft can be used for avariety of purposes, including reconnaissance, militaryattacks, and data collection. The reasons unmanned aerialvehicles can be used for these purposes are the advances madeby engineers that allow the aircraft to fly further and withmore precision. Today’s UAVs are flying at three-quarters thespeed of sound [8] and can stay in the air for upwards of twodays [8]. There have been trips made by UAVs thatcircumnavigate the globe [6]. Many of the UAVs currently inuse take off and land on their own. Others have bombingcapabilities while in flight from 65,000 feet in the air [1].There are other UAVs that are the opposite of the type listedthey are smaller and launched by hand. The smallest is only15 cm in length [3]. The smaller aircrafts are used mainly byindividual troops wishing to do quick surveillance of what isover the hill or around the corner. Moving away from themore common UAVs that are not environmentally friendly, tosome less common UAVs that are environmentally friendlywe find Helios. Helios is an aircraft that has been developedby the United States government. This plane has a wingspanof 237 feet [9], and this entire distance is covered with solarpanels. The plane has multiple propellers, each one poweredby solar electric energy generated by the solar panels on thewing.These varying tasks managed by unmanned aircraft teamtogether to compile an impressive report card. But what doall of these aircrafts desperately depend on other than GPS?Quality control systems keep them off the ground and incontrolled flight. This leads to the next topic of discussion,the elementary controls of an aircraft’s most basic yetfundamental handling. Flight Control Dynamics and UnmannedAerial VehiclesKevin D. Palmer Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI 495461IV. CONTROLSThis section looks at only three sets of the many controlsinvolved in the flight of an aircraft, but these three sets ofcontrols; roll, pitch, and yaw; are fundamental to stable flight.The following figure shows the orientation of parameters usedin the controls developed in this document.Figure 1: Parameter OrientationThe development of controls will be done in three stages, one for each type of movement to be discussed. The first sets of controls to look at will be the roll of an aircraft. This will be followed by the pitch and then the yaw of an aircraft.A. RollRoll has to do with an aircraft’s lateral dynamics. Thesedynamics are controlled by ailerons, also known as the flapson the
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