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Global Path Following Control for the Planar Vertical Takeoff and Landing Aircraft

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Abstract

This paper presents a closed-form solution for the global path following control of the planar vertical takeoff and landing (PVTOL) aircraft. The proposed control scheme consists of two steps. In the first step, a reference model is well constructed to generate a reference trajectory and a reference velocity satisfying some necessary constraints. In the second step, the backstepping control technique is utilized to develop a tracking controller that enables the aircraft to track the generated reference commands. Consequently, the obtained controller allows the aircraft to converge to the desired path at the desired speed under arbitrary initial conditions. The desired path can be a general geometric curve, and the desired speed can be time-varying. The main novelty of the proposed control architecture lies in the design of the reference model, which serves as a command filter and resolves the conflict between the global convergence to the desired path and the velocity assignment. The numerical simulation results verify the effectiveness of the control scheme.

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Correspondence to Baoli Ma.

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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61573034, 61327807).

Jie Wang received his B.S. degree in automation from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), Nanjing, China, in 2017. He is currently working toward a Ph.D. degree in the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University. His research interest is nonlinear control of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

Baoli Ma received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and control engineering from Northwestern Polytechnic University (NPU), Xi’an, China. He received his Ph.D. degree in system and control science from Beihang University (BUAA), Beijing, China. He is currently a professor at Beihang University. His research interests include nonlinear control, robotics and automation.

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Wang, J., Ma, B. Global Path Following Control for the Planar Vertical Takeoff and Landing Aircraft. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 19, 4046–4055 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-020-0682-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-020-0682-4

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