A Wind Estimation Method with an Unmanned Rotorcraft for Environmental Monitoring Tasks
Jia-Ying Wang,
Bing Luo,
Ming Zeng,
Qing-Hao Meng
Affiliations
Jia-Ying Wang
Institute of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Process Measurement and Control, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Bing Luo
National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China, Beijing 100029, China
Ming Zeng
Institute of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Process Measurement and Control, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Qing-Hao Meng
Institute of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Process Measurement and Control, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Wind velocity (strength and direction) is an important parameter for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based environmental monitoring tasks. A novel wind velocity estimation method is proposed for rotorcrafts. Based on an extended state observer, this method derives the wind disturbance from rotors’ speeds and rotorcraft’s acceleration and position. Then the wind disturbance is scaled to calculate the airspeed vector, which is substituted into a wind triangle to obtain the wind velocity. Easy-to-implement methods for calculating the rotorcraft’s thrust and drag coefficient are also proposed, which are important parameters to obtain the wind drag and the airspeed, respectively. Simulations and experiments using a quadrotor in both hovering and flight conditions have validated the proposed method.
