Geometric Inverse Flight Dynamics on SO(3) and Application to Tethered Fixed-Wing Aircraft
Robotics and Mechatronics lab, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science, University of Twente（代尔夫特理工大学机器人与机电实验室，电气工程、数学与计算机科学学院，代尔夫特理工大学）；Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome（罗马大学计算机、控制与管理工程系，罗马萨皮恩扎大学）
Antonio Franchi, Chiara Gabellieri
备注：
ACCEPTED ICUAS 2026
发表信息：
2026 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2026
We present a robotics-oriented, coordinate-free formulation of inverse flight dynamics for fixed-wing aircraft on SO(3). Translational force balance is written in the world frame and rotational dynamics in the body frame; aerodynamic directions (drag, lift, side) are defined geometrically, avoiding local attitude coordinates. Enforcing coordinated flight (no sideslip), we derive a closed-form trajectory-to-input map yielding the attitude, angular velocity, and thrust-angle-of-attack pair, and we recover the aerodynamic moment coefficients component-wise. Applying such a map to tethered flight on spherical parallels, we obtain analytic expressions for the required bank angle and identify a specific zero-bank locus where the tether tension exactly balances centrifugal effects, highlighting the decoupling between aerodynamic coordination and the apparent gravity vector. Under a simple lift/drag law, the minimal-thrust angle of attack admits a closed form. These pointwise quasi-steady inversion solutions become steady-flight trim when the trajectory and rotational dynamics are time-invariant. The framework bridges inverse simulation in aeronautics with geometric modeling in robotics, providing a rigorous building block for trajectory design and feasibility checks.
This paper proposes a novel algorithm for aerobatic trajectory generation for a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) tailsitter flying wing aircraft. The algorithm differs from existing approaches for fixed-wing trajectory generation, as it considers a realistic six-degree-of-freedom (6DOF) flight dynamics model, including aerodynamics equations. Using a global dynamics model enables the generation of aerobatics trajectories that exploit the entire flight envelope, enabling agile maneuvering through the stall regime, sideways uncoordinated flight, inverted flight etc. The method uses the diffe…
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University（北卡罗来纳农业技术州立大学）
This paper presents a landing controller for a fixed-wing aircraft during the landing phase, ensuring the aircraft reaches the touchdown point smoothly. The landing problem is converted to a finite-time linear quadratic tracking (LQT) problem in which an aircraft needs to track the desired landing path in the longitudinal-vertical plane while satisfying performance requirements and flight constraints. First, we design a smooth trajectory that meets flight performance requirements and constraints. Then, an optimal controller is designed to minimize the tracking error, while landing the aircraft…
Boeing Research & Technology Europe（波音欧洲研究与技术公司）；Polytechnic University of Madrid（马德里理工大学）；Centre for Automation and Robotics（自动化与机器人中心）
The navigation systems of autonomous aircraft rely on the readings provided by a suite of onboard sensors to estimate the aircraft state. In the case of fixed wing vehicles, the sensor suite is composed by triads of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, and an air data system (Pitot tube, air vanes, thermometer, and barometer), and is often complemented by one or more digital cameras. An accurate representation of the behavior and error sources of each of these sensors, together with the images generated by the cameras, in indispen…
Collision Avoidance and Geofencing for Fixed-wing Aircraft with Control Barrier Functions
Wichita State University（威奇托州立大学）；Nodein Autonomy Corporation（诺丁自主公司）；Parallax Advanced Research（视差高级研究公司）；Air Force Research Laboratory（空军研究实验室）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）
University of Michigan（密歇根大学）；University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩郡分校）
This paper presents an adaptive autopilot for fixed-wing aircraft and compares its performance with a fixed-gain autopilot. The adaptive autopilot is constructed by augmenting the autopilot architecture with adaptive control laws that are updated using retrospective cost adaptive control. In order to investigate the performance of the adaptive autopilot, the default gains of the fixed-gain autopilot are scaled to degrade its performance. This scenario provides a venue for determining the ability of the adaptive autopilot to compensate for the degraded fixed-gain autopilot. Next, the performanc…
University of Ottawa（渥太华大学）；Aswan University（阿斯旺大学）；University of Texas at Arlington（德克萨斯大学阿灵顿分校）
The control problem of the flexible wing aircraft is challenging due to the prevailing and high nonlinear deformations in the flexible wing system. This urged for new control mechanisms that are robust to the real-time variations in the wing's aerodynamics. An online control mechanism based on a value iteration reinforcement learning process is developed for flexible wing aerial structures. It employs a model-free control policy framework and a guaranteed convergent adaptive learning architecture to solve the system's Bellman optimality equation. A Riccati equation is derived and shown to be e…
University of Michigan（密歇根大学）；MIT（麻省理工学院）；University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩分校）
This paper develops an adaptive digital autopilot for a fixed-wing aircraft and compares its performance with a fixed-gain autopilot. The adaptive digital autopilot is constructed by augmenting the autopilot architecture implemented in PX4 flight stack with adaptive digital control laws that are updated using the retrospective cost adaptive control algorithm. In order to investigate the performance of the adaptive digital autopilot, the default gains of the fixed-gain autopilot are scaled down to degrade its performance. This scenario provides a venue for determining the ability of the adaptiv…
In this paper we introduce the usage of guidance vector fields for the coordination and formation flight of fixed-wing aircraft. In particular, we describe in detail the technological implementation of the formation flight control for a fully distributed execution of the algorithm by employing the open-source project Paparazzi. In this context, distributed means that each aircraft executes the algorithm on board, each aircraft only needs information about its neighbors, and the implementation is straightforwardly scalable to an arbitrary number of vehicles, i.e., the needed resources such as m…
The emerging global market for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) services is anticipated to reach USD 58.4 billion by 2026, spurring significant efforts to safely integrate routine UAV operations into the national airspace in a manner that they do not compromise the existing safety levels. The commercial use of UAVs would be enhanced by an ability to sense and avoid potential mid-air collision threats however research in this field is hindered by the lack of available datasets as they are expensive and technically complex to capture. In this paper we present a dataset for vision based aircraft det…
Singapore University of Technology and Design（新加坡科技设计大学）；Indian Institute of Science（印度科学学院）
A solution to the waypoint navigation problem for fixed wing micro air vehicles (MAV) is addressed in this paper, in the framework of integrated guidance and control (IGC). IGC yields a single step solution to the waypoint navigation problem, unlike conventional multiple loop design. The pure proportional navigation (PPN) guidance law is integrated with the MAV dynamics. A multivariable static output feedback (SOF) controller is designed for the linear state space model formulated in the IGC framework. The waypoint navigation algorithm handles the minimum turn radius constraint of the MAV. The…
School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学航空学院）
In the field of fixed wing aircraft, many morphing technologies have been applied to the wing, such as adaptive airfoil, variable span aircraft, variable swept angle aircraft, etc., but few are aimed at the tail. The traditional fixed wing tail includes horizontal and vertical tail. Inspired by the bird tail, this paper will introduce a new bionic tail. The tail has a novel control mode, which has multiple control variables. Compared with the traditional fixed wing tail, it adds the area control and rotation control around the longitudinal symmetry axis, so it can control the pitch and yaw of …
California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；AeroVironment, Inc.（航空环境公司）
Fixed-wing vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft pose a unique control challenge that stems from complex aerodynamic interactions between wings and rotors. Thus, accurate estimation of external forces is indispensable for achieving high performance flight. In this paper, we present a composite adaptive nonlinear tracking controller for a fixed-wing VTOL. The method employs online adaptation of linear force models, and generates accurate estimation for wing and rotor forces in real-time based on information from a three-dimensional airflow sensor. The controller is implemented on a cust…
Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学航空航天工程学院）；Department of Systems Control and Flight Dynamics, ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab（法国航空航天实验室（ONERA）系统控制与飞行动力学系）
Flow visualisations are essential to better understand the unsteady aerodynamics of flapping wing flight. The issues inherent to animal experiments, such as poor controllability and unnatural flapping when tethered, can be avoided by using robotic flyers. Such an approach holds a promise for a more systematic and repeatable methodology for flow visualisation, through a better controlled flight. Such experiments require high precision position control, however, and until now this was not possible due to the challenging flight dynamics and payload restrictions of flapping wing Micro Air Vehicles…
Polytechnic University of Madrid（马德里理工大学）；Boeing Research & Technology Europe (BR&TE)（波音欧洲研究与技术部）
Autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inertial navigation exhibits an extreme dependency on the availability of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) signals, without which it incurs in a slow but unavoidable position drift that may ultimately lead to the loss of the platform if the GNSS signals are not restored or the aircraft does not reach a location from which it can be recovered by remote control. This article describes an stochastic high fidelity simulation of the flight of a fixed wing low SWaP (size, weight, and power) autonomous UAV in turbulent and varying weather intended to…
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学机器人研究所）
The recent increase in the use of aerial vehicles raises concerns about the safety and reliability of autonomous operations. There is a growing need for methods to monitor the status of these aircraft and report any faults and anomalies to the safety pilot or to the autopilot to deal with the emergency situation. In this paper, we present a real-time approach using the Recursive Least Squares method to detect anomalies in the behavior of an aircraft. The method models the relationship between correlated input-output pairs online and uses the model to detect anomalies. The result is an easy-to-…
3D Path-Following Guidance via Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for Fixed-Wing Small UAS
Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校安与H.J.斯梅德航空航天工程科学系）；Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc.（查尔斯·斯泰克·德帕尔实验室公司）
Fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer significant performance advantages over rotary-wing UAVs in terms of speed, endurance, and efficiency. However, these vehicles have traditionally been severely limited with regards to maneuverability. In this paper, we present a nonlinear control approach for enabling aerobatic fixed-wing UAVs to maneuver in constrained spaces. Our approach utilizes full-state direct trajectory optimization and a minimalistic, but representative, nonlinear aircraft model to plan aggressive fixed-wing trajectories in real-time at 5 Hz across high angles-of-attack…
Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) vehicles will open new opportunities in aviation. This paper describes the design and wind tunnel analysis of an eVTOL uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) prototype with a traditional aircraft wing, tail, and puller motor along with four vertical thrust pusher motors. Vehicle design and construction are summarized. Dynamic thrust from propulsion modules is experimentally determined at different airspeeds over a large sweep of propeller angles of attack. Wind tunnel tests with the vehicle prototype cover a suite of hover, transition and cruise flight con…
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）
As off-the-shelf (OTS) autopilots become more widely available and user-friendly and the drone market expands, safer, more efficient, and more complex motion planning and control will become necessary for fixed-wing aerial robotic platforms. Considering typical low-level attitude stabilization available on OTS flight controllers, this paper first develops an approach for modeling and identification of the control augmented dynamics for a small fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). A high-level Nonlinear Model Predictive Controller (NMPC) is subsequently formulated for simultaneous airspeed…
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne（洛桑联邦理工学院）；The University of Electro-Communications（电气通信大学）；Wageningen University and Research（瓦赫宁根大学及研究中心）
Drones have shown to be useful aerial vehicles for unmanned transport missions such as food and medical supply delivery. This can be leveraged to deliver life-saving nutrition and medicine for people in emergency situations. However, commercial drones can generally only carry 10 % - 30 % of their own mass as payload, which limits the amount of food delivery in a single flight. One novel solution to noticeably increase the food-carrying ratio of a drone, is recreating some structures of a drone, such as the wings, with edible materials. We thus propose a drone, which is no longer only a food tr…
Estimation of Aerodynamics Forces in Dynamic Morphing Wing Flight
Silicon Synapse Lab., Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, USA（Silicon Synapse实验室，电气与计算机工程系，东北大学，波士顿，美国）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of California, Berkeley CA 94720, USA（机械工程系，加州大学伯克利分校，伯克利，美国）；Department of Aerospace Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA（航空航天工程系，加州理工学院，帕萨迪纳，美国）
Dual-Regime Hybrid Aerodynamic Modeling of Winged Blimps With Neural Mixing
Robotics and Control Laboratory（机器人与控制实验室）；School of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics（先进制造与机器人学院）；State Key Laboratory of Turbulence and Complex Systems（湍流与复杂系统国家重点实验室）
Polytechnic University of Madrid（马德里理工大学）；Boeing Research & Technology Europe（波音欧洲研究与技术公司）；National University of Distance Education（国立远程教育大学）；Center for Automation and Robotics (UPM-CSIC)（自动化与机器人中心（UPM-CSIC））
This article proposes an inertial navigation algorithm intended to lower the negative consequences of the absence of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals on the navigation of autonomous fixed wing low SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power) UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles). In addition to accelerometers and gyroscopes, the filter takes advantage of sensors usually present onboard these platforms, such as magnetometers, Pitot tube, and air vanes, and aims to minimize the attitude error and reduce the position drift (both horizontal and vertical) with the dual objective of improving the aircraft…
