Unmanned Aerial VehiclePitch Optimization for Fast Response of Elevator Control System

The flight dynamicsof an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)is the science ofitsorientation and control in three dimensions.The three primary orientations include: the Pitch, the Roll and the Yaw. Therear part of the tailplaneis known as the elevatorcontrol ofanUAVpitch (therotating around the transversal axis). Flight route deviations and flight altitude variations due to hash weather conditions such as shock waves or thunder storm and the wind speed/direction during flight greatly affect the pitch of UAV. Consequently, series of UAVmishaps (air crash) caused by pitch control faults have been recorded in the aviation industry in recent times. Such pitch control faults are mostlycaused by inadequate speed and accuracy in the automatic control of UAVpitch mechanism or the tail elevator. The main goal of this research is todesign a classical controller that optimizesthe pitch control response speed and accuracy of an UAVwith built-in autopilot. A PID controller has been design and fine-tuned with MATLAB PID Tuner to obtain suitable gains for faster and accurate response of the UAVelevator. The improved control parameters achieved in verifying the model and design by simulation with MATLAB/Simulinkare the settling time of 0.436 seconds, the rise time of 0.113 seconds, the percentage overshoot of 9.43%and a steady-state error less than 2%.