Flight Control for Manned Multirotor Aircraft with Complex and Constrained Actuation Systems

In the ongoing debate on future urban mobility, personal aerial vehicles are considered as a promising new mode of transportation. For a man-carrying multirotor, overall safety, reliability, and performance greatly depend on the fly-by-wire system. To this end, the design of suitable Guidance, Navigation, and Control algorithms is of pivotal importance to bring such concepts into commercial use. This thesis aims at solving specific challenges in manned multirotor flight control. As a starting point, relevant flight control aspects are introduced, which distinguish these aircraft from typical unmanned aerial vehicles such as small quadcopter drones. Besides redundancy in the propulsion system, this covers handling quality characteristics related to the unique urban mission of personal aerial vehicles. Given these challenges, a tailored flight control framework for manned multirotor operations is proposed. The approach involves various elements such as control allocation, control law design, and handling quality shaping. Related to the concept of redundancy, the integration of multiple control objectives with different priority is discussed.

The contributions of this thesis are supported by successful flight tests on a two-seated multirotor aircraft. The results underline the ability of the framework to enable safe and reliable operations of man-carrying multirotor systems - a topic that must be approached given the potential impact on future transportation systems.