Ishola, Ademayowa AWhidborne, James FTang, Gilbert2024-12-202024-12-202024-12-15Ishola AA, Whidborne JF, Tang G. (2024) An aircraft-manipulator system for virtual flight testing of longitudinal flight dynamics. Robotics, Volume 13, Issue 12, December 2024, Article number 179https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics13120179https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/23315A virtual flight test is the process of flying an aircraft model inside a wind tunnel in a manner that replicates free-flight. In this paper, a 3-DOF aircraft-manipulator system is proposed that can be used for longitudinal dynamics virtual flight tests. The system consists of a two rotational degrees-of-freedom manipulator arm with an aircraft wind tunnel model attached to the third joint. This aircraft-manipulator system is constrained to operate for only the longitudinal motion of the aircraft. Thus, the manipulator controls the surge and heave of the aircraft whilst the pitch is free to rotate and can be actively controlled by means of an all-moving tailplane of the aircraft if required. In this initial study, a flight dynamics model of the aircraft is used to obtain dynamic response trajectories of the aircraft in free-flight. A model of the coupled aircraft-manipulator system developed using the Euler method is presented, and PID controllers are used to control the manipulator so that the aircraft follows the free-flight trajectory (with respect to the air). The inverse kinematics are used to produce the reference joint angles for the manipulator. The system is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink and a virtual flight test trajectory is compared with a free-flight test trajectory, demonstrating the potential of the proposed system for virtual flight tests.enAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/flight dynamicsaircraft manipulatorwind tunnel testsimulationrobot manipulatorvirtual flight testArticle2218-65815605561791312