Hybrid tracking control of fixed wing aerial vehicles

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a coordinated guidance-tracking hybrid controller in order to control velocity and attitude of fixed wing aircrafts. The proposed controller is able to adapt its operation depending on the trajectory, altitude, and external perturbations. The adaptive mechanism is activated via the satisfaction of a set of prescribed restrictions which are both security and performance based. The nature of the controller is hybrid because the system dynamics is modeled continuously with the interaction of an adaptive discrete control action which defines the next active behavior of aircraft. Here, conditions of stability are studied as well as their dependence with control gains and switching restrictions. Numerical simulations in a F16 aircraft are used for illustrating the proposed control method.