Experimental Model and Controller Validation for a Series Hybrid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

An inherent modular and scalable design framework has made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) popular for various applications across many industries. The hybridization of UAV's facilitates higher performing and more efficient aircraft but necessitates new control designs. At a vehicle level, most efforts thus far have focused on the modeling and development of novel controllers in simulation. However, validating these controllers on experimental hardware is necessary before testing these algorithms on expensive flight-ready hardware. This paper seeks to address this research gap by experimentally validating a system-level hybrid UAV model. Using the validated system model, a baseline and predictive controller are developed in simulation and experimentally validated using a series hybrid UAV powertrain testbed.