Design and Control of a Tethered

System for UAVs Using an Intelligent

Nonlinear Control Technique

Presented By: Moazzam Ali

Supervisor: Dr. Abdullah Mughees

 Contents

 Introduction

 Problem Statement

 Literature

 Controller Design

 Optimization Algorithm

 Proposed Timeline

 Conclusion

 References
 Introduction
• Researchers working on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are nowadays
witnessing progressive advances in the field of Quadcopter.

Fig 1. Domains of Unmanned Vehicle (UV) systems.

1
 Introduction
Tethered Drone design and control is quite challenging due to
its:
• Inherently unstable behavior,
• Complex and strongly coupled dynamics,
• Nonlinear and multi-variable characteristics.

Fig 2. Block Diagram of a Tethered Drone.

2
 Introduction
Tethered drone system consists of:

• Base station

• Multicopter

• Buck converter
Fig 3. Tethered Drone
• Tethered wire

• Optional renewable source of energy

(i.e. PV System).

3
 Applications of Tethered Drones

Critical Infrastructure Monitoring.

Event Management

Disaster Response

Military Intelligence

4
 Problem Statement

Ensuring uninterrupted power supply from renewable sources and

grid integration to tethered drones with precise trajectory tracking
is challenging due to their nonlinear dynamics, disturbances, model
uncertainties, and high control effort. This research proposes
nonlinear control strategies to integrate renewable energy with the
grid, regulate drone power via buck converter control, and optimize
tethered drone performance using advanced algorithms. The goal is
to achieve reliable power delivery, improved trajectory tracking,
enhanced disturbance rejection, and reduced control effort,
advancing the capabilities of tethered drones for diverse
applications.

5
 Literature Review
Paper Publication Contributions Limitation

• Only single
performance index
Sliding Mode Control (IAE) is used to
International
of Tethered Drone: Conference on Feed Forward Sliding mode compare the results
Take-off and Landing Unmanned controller is proposed with previous
under Aircraft for the 3D trajectory following controller.
Turbulent Wind Systems process in tethered drones. • Magnus affect is
conditions [1] (ICUAS), 2023 considered as
disturbance not an
additional actuator.

Conditioned adaptive • Real time

barrier-based double • Multiple SMC variants were constraints like
integral super twisting implemented to control sensors
SMC for quadcopter heading position characteristics
ELSEVIER,
trajectory tracking of a and altitude. need to be
2024
quadcopter and • Different performance considered as
hardware in loop using indices are used to optimize system is not
IGWO control law. tested in diverse
Algorithm [2] environments.

6
 Literature Review
Paper Publication Contributions Limitation

IEEE
JOURNAL SM controller for
• No optimization
Sliding-Mode Control OF CTLI-based grid-connected
technique is
of PWM Dual EMERGING system to check the
discussed in paper
Inverter-Based AND performances under deviations
and no
Grid-Connected PV SELECTED in the input
performance
System: Modeling and TOPICS IN power to the inverters, due to
indices are
Performance Analysis POWER changes in the availability of
compared.
ELECTRON the solar irradiance,
ICS, 2016

International
System Requirements
Conference • Drones available in markets • No mathematical
and Review for the
on Control, are reviewed and new idea model is provided,
Operation of a
Decision and is proposed to integrate and no control
Tethered Drone with
Information vehicle with tethered drone technique is
an Autonomous
Technologies, to extend its range. implemented.
Vehicle
2024

6
 Model Block Diagram

Fig 4. Proposed Model Block Diagram

3
 Sliding Mode Control
A sliding mode control (SMC) is a nonlinear controller that uses a sliding
surface to control the behavior of a system.

Fig 8. Phasor diagram analysis of SMC.

9
 Why SMC?

• SMC offers several advantages over other controllers.

• More robust than PID while ensuring finite time convergence. PID struggles
with non linear models.
• Lesser computational effort compared to MPC so can be implemented on
lesser powerful onboard processors hence better at real time control.
• Unlike in fuzzy logic, the Lyapunov methods in SMC can ensure finite time
convergence also with a large number of fuzzy rules and membership
functions fuzzy logic becomes computationally intensive.

10
 Optimization Algorithm
• Gain tuned by hit-and-trial method are not optimal and time consuming

• PID= KP (e) + KI ∫(e) dt + KD d(e)/dt

• Multiple optimization techniques will be utilized in this work to optimize

the gains of all controllers to optimize their performance.

11
 Proposed Timeline
February 25 March 25 April 25 May 25

Modelling
Controller
Design

Advance
Control
Laws
Optimization
Optimal Control

Compilation of
Results
Paper Writing

Thesis Writing

FD

12
 Conclusions

• Multiple nonlinear control laws will be designed and analyzed for tethered
drone control, Buck converter and inverter for renewable source.
• Lyapunov stability analysis will be performed to verify asymptotic stability
with the designed control law.
• Transient characteristics and performance indices will be evaluated for
performance comparison.
• Optimization algorithms will be used for designing the optimal optimized
control law.

13
 References
1. Zakeye, A., Dumon, J., Meslem, N., & Hably, A. (2023). Sliding mode control of tethered
drone: Take-off and landing under turbulent wind conditions. 2023 International
Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), Lazarski University, Warsaw, Poland.

2. Mughees, A., Ahmad, I., Mughees, N., & Mughees, A. (2024). Conditioned adaptive
barrier-based double integral super twisting SMC for trajectory tracking of a quadcopter
and hardware-in-loop using IGWO algorithm. Expert Systems With Applications, 235,
121141.

3. Kumar, N., Saha, T. K., & Dey, J. (2016). Sliding-mode control of PWM dual inverter-
based grid-connected PV system: Modeling and performance analysis. IEEE Journal of
Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, 4(2), 435–444.

4. J. E. Pickering, N. Ghanami, J. D’Souza, S. Kattyayam, M. Kavakli-Thorne and K. J. Burnham,

"System Requirements and Review for the Operation of a Tethered Drone with an Autonomous
Vehicle," 2024 10th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies
(CoDIT), Vallette, Malta, 2024, pp. 2259-2265, doi: 10.1109/CoDIT62066.2024.10708422 .
 ANY
QUESTIONS?