Robust output tracking control of an unmanned aerial vehicle subject to additive state dependent disturbance

Abstract

In this study, an asymptotic tracking controller is developed for an aircraft model subject to additive, state-dependent, non-linear disturbance-like terms. Dynamic inversion technique in conjunction with robust integral of the sign of the error term is utilised in the controller design. Compared to the previous studies, the need of acceleration measurements of the aircraft have been removed. In addition, the proposed controller design utilises only the output of aircraft dynamics. Lyapunov based analysis is applied to prove global asymptotic convergence of the tracking error signal. Numerical simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed robust controller.