This article proposes an adaptive path-following controller of small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the presence of wind disturbances, which explicitly considers that wind speed is time-varying. The main idea was to formulate UAVs path-following as control design for systems with parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. Assuming that there is no prior information on wind, the proposed solution is based on the $\mathcal {L}{}_{1}$ adaptive control, using linearized model dynamics. This approach makes clear statements for performance specifications of the controller and relaxes the common constant wind velocity assumption. This makes the design more realistic and the analysis more rigorous, because in practice wind is usually time varying (windshear, turbulence, and gusting). The path-following controller was demonstrated in flight under wind speed up to $10 \text{ m/s}$, representing 50% of the nominal UAV airspeed.

中文翻译：

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$\mathcal {L}{}_{1}$ 小型固定翼无人机在风中的自适应路径跟踪

本文提出了一种小型固定翼无人机（UAV）在存在风扰的情况下的自适应路径跟踪控制器，该控制器明确考虑到风速是时变的。主要思想是将无人机路径跟踪制定为具有参数不确定性和外部干扰的系统的控制设计。假设没有关于风的先验信息，所提出的解决方案基于 $\mathcal {L}{}_{1}$ 自适应控制，使用线性模型动力学。这种方法对控制器的性能规格做出了明确的陈述，并放宽了常见的恒定风速假设。这使得设计更加真实，分析更加严谨，因为在实践中风通常是随时间变化的（风切变、湍流和阵风）。