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

• 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

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.