Cruise Control for DEP UAV with Enhanced Performance Against Disturbances: A Distributed Control Approach

Distributed electric propulsion (DEP) system has drawn much attention in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications, owing to its advanced performance in aerodynamic efficiency. This paper proposes a novel distributed cruise control for UAV with DEP system (DEP UAV). By coordinating the motors within the DEP system in a distributed manner, the proposed control regulates the UAV's flight speed as requested and exhibits enhanced dynamic performance in maintaining the UAV's moment balance against external disturbances. Moreover, the proposed control improves the reliability of the DEP UAV, as it provides dissimilar redundancy against common-mode failure. Detailed controller design has been provided, and its performance in both steady state and dynamic state has been discussed. The effectiveness of the proposed control has been further validated on a Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop (C-HIL) testbed developed for DEP UAV application.