Path tracking of a small autonomous airplane in wind gusts

Elie Kahale (1) , Yasmina Bestaoui (1) , Pedro Castillo (2)

1 IBISC - Informatique, Biologie Intégrative et Systèmes Complexes
2 Heudiasyc - Heuristique et Diagnostic des Systèmes Complexes [Compiègne]

In this paper, we study the trajectory tracking problem of autonomous small airplanes in presence of unknown wind gusts. The vehicle is represented by its center of gravity, and the mathematical translational model is derived using Newton's second law. The controller is designed using Robust Control Lyapunov Function and Sontag's feedback stabilizing universal. The proposed control laws guarantees, by structure, the robustness of the system with respect to different uncertainties due to model and unknown external parameters. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the performance of proposed control strategy.

Mots clés: Autonomous airplane; Center of gravity; Control laws; Control Lyapunov function; Control strategies; Feedback stabilizing; Newton's second law; Path tracking; Trajectory tracking problems; Translational models; Wind gust

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Elie Kahale, Yasmina Bestaoui, Pedro Castillo. Path tracking of a small autonomous airplane in wind gusts. 25th IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IROS 2012), Oct 2012, Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal. pp.402-407, ⟨10.1109/IROS.2012.6385916⟩. ⟨hal-00868716⟩