Flight Control Of A Long-Endurance Solar-Powered UAV Based On Model Predictive Control

The low-altitude long-endurance solar UAV is a kind of UAV that uses solar energy as energy and can fly for a long time at low altitudes, even day and night. Because of their long-term flight characteristics, long-endurance solar UAVs have huge advantages in agricultural mapping, battlefield reconnaissance, and other aspects. This paper will focus on the energy analysis and control law design of a solar UAV that has been designed so far. In terms of energy analysis, this paper establishes an energy model for solar UAV based on the energy source, energy output, and battery charge and discharge model of solar UAV, and substitutes the relevant parameters of the UAV into the model to prove its continuous flight day and night feasibility. For the control law design, the linear and nonlinear models of solar UAV are established in this paper. The MPC control scheme is designed and compared with the conventional PID control method to demonstrate the advantages proposed control scheme.