Modeling and loop-shaping control design for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles

Autopilot systems are used to complete missions without any human intervention or to assist the pilot durimng flight. In other words, they are used to make flight missions more reliable and efficient. The fiist step is a stabilizer mode when it comes to autopilot designing. Conventional autopilot systems have at least one inner an done outer loops. The stabilizer mode is the inner loop and, additional missions, such as speed, altitude, and heading hold are outer part of the system. From past to present, to control an autopilot system several types of methods are used. Although at th beginning classical control methods are used frequently, designing an autopilot system with modern control methods is much more preferable now. In this study with H_∞ loop-shaping contorl method which is one of the modern techniques, automatic flight for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle will be provided. Primarily, the inner loop which is the stabilizer mode then outer loop which is the altitude hold is modeled in the MATLAB/Simulink environment. Flight dynamic coefficients and stability control derivatives are calculated for the generated aircraft model to be included in the control system. After the theorical steps above are taken, generated autopilot tested in both simulation and real flight. The main improvement of this thesis to literature is already existed H_∞ loop shaping control method is used for an autopilot which is designed including the full state flight dynamics and applied to real system.