Combined of Lyapunov-stable and active disturbance rejection control for the path following of a small unmanned aerial vehicle

This article proposes a composite path following controller that allows the small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle to follow a predefined path. Assuming that the vehicle is equipped with an autopilot for altitude and airspeed maintained well, the controller design adopts the hierarchical control s...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yang Chen, Jianhong Liang, Chaolei Wang, Yicheng Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2017-03-01
Series:International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1177/1729881417699150
Description
Summary:This article proposes a composite path following controller that allows the small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle to follow a predefined path. Assuming that the vehicle is equipped with an autopilot for altitude and airspeed maintained well, the controller design adopts the hierarchical control structure. With the inner-loop controller design based on the notion of active disturbance rejection control which will respond to the desired roll angle command, the core part of the outer-loop controller is designed based on Lyapunov stability theorem to generate the desired course rate for the straight-line paths. The bank to turn maneuver is used to transform the desired course rate to the desired roll angle command. Both the hardware-in-the-loop simulation in the X-Plane simulator and actual experimental flight tests have been successfully achieved, which verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.
ISSN:1729-8814