Experimental modeling and adaptive control of an unmanned aerial vehicle as roadside assistance

Small scale fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are an emerging technology, and have been widely used in many many manned/unmanned and cooperative operations as research testbeds. This paper describes the realistic modeling and adaptive autonomous control of a small scale UAV that serves as a dynamic roadside agent to provide critical roadside assistance and manage highway traffic. Additionally, the importance and implementation of dynamic roadside operations to optimize platoon acceleration and avoid rush hour traffic congestion are discussed. The steady-state flight trim and model-decomposition of 6 Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) UAV model using small perturbation theory are provided. Finally, the implementation of an autonomous adaptive control approach is given which is advantageous over other linear based control approaches for small-scale UAVs.