Automatic Take-off and Landing on the Maiden Flight of a Novel Fixed-Wing UAV​

For fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with flight dynamics similar to manned aircraft, highly automated operation is often desirable due to technical and operational limitations of manual remote piloting. For a newly-designed UAV, this implies that already the maiden flight must be conducted automatically. The development of corresponding automatic flight guidance and control functions depends largely on simulation models, as real flight data of the configuration do not exist yet. Such models, however, represent the behavior of the real aircraft generally only up to a difficult-to-predict level of fidelity. At the Institute of Flight System Dynamics of the Technical University of Munich, the automatic flight guidance and control system of the novel fixed-wing UAV `SAGITTA Demonstrator' has been developed and successfully flight tested on its maiden flight. This paper discusses the automatic take-off and landing (ATOL) system of the SAGITTA Demonstrator and presents how it performed on the UAV's maiden flight. Deviations between simulated and real flight are identified and analyzed. The reactions of the ATOL system to these deviations are evaluated and related to its design guideline of robust automation. Conclusively, it is summarized how the ATOL design contributed to the successful accomplishment of the maiden flight despite deviations from the preflight engineering simulations.     «

For fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with flight dynamics similar to manned aircraft, highly automated operation is often desirable due to technical and operational limitations of manual remote piloting. For a newly-designed UAV, this implies that already the maiden flight must be conducted automatically. The development of corresponding automatic flight guidance and control functions depends largely on simulation models, as real flight data of the configuration do not exist yet. Such m...     »