On the Development of Autonomous Powered Parachute

The powered parachute (PPC)is now the most popular ultra-light flight equipments. The PPC has excellent self stability and is very simple to fly. To extend the PPC´s application to some special area, for example, in long time cruise, precision airdrop, and dangerous mission, autonomous flight is required. This paper aims to fulfill such a design. The flight principle of the PPC is firstly analyzed to get the basic control variants and control rule. Then, the autonomous flight system structure is discussed. Later, an integrated sensor system designed is introduced in detail. This integrated sensor system can acquire information such as the PPC canopy location, the rudder rigging tensile force, the air speed and the ground speed of the craft, the absolute 3D location and the engine temperature, oil level etc. Information acquired by the integrated sensor system can reflect the real-time situations of the PPC, this is very important for the flight controller to make a proper flight plan or take actions to response emergency situations. The primary results of our work have shown the efficiency of the proposed integrated sensor system and the high feasibility of the PPC´s autonomous flight.