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Adaptive block backstepping control for a UAV performing lateral maneuvers under lateral c.g. uncertainty

Anukaran Khanna (Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Pilani, India)
Neelaksh Singh (Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Pilani, India)
Bijoy K. Mukherjee (Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Pilani, India)

Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology

ISSN: 0002-2667

Article publication date: 7 March 2022

Issue publication date: 30 May 2022

130

Abstract

Purpose

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have wide applications in surveillance and reconnaissance without risking human life. Due to unbalanced payload distribution or in-flight deployment, UAVs may undergo lateral center of gravity (c.g.) variations resulting in an asymmetric dynamic having significant longitudinal and lateral/directional coupling and hence more pronounced nonlinearity. Therefore, automatic control of UAVs becomes extremely difficult when it is forced to perform maneuvers under such imbalance in lateral mass distribution. The purpose of this paper is to design adaptive nonlinear control so that the UAV can perform some useful lateral/directional maneuver under lateral c.g. uncertainty.

Design/methodology/approach

First the nominal lateral/directional dynamics of a fixed-wing UAV is framed into strict feedback form and then the block backstepping approach is used to design the controller to execute horizontal turn and aileron roll maneuvers under no lateral c.g. variation. Thereafter, an adaptive block backstepping controller is designed to adapt to uncertainty in lateral c.g. position considering an approximate model of the asymmetric dynamics. The proposed adaptive scheme is validated against the same two maneuvers as considered for the nominal case.

Findings

First it is shown that the lateral/directional dynamics of a UAV can be converted to a block strict feedback form for executing some lateral/directional maneuvers. However, it was observed that the maneuver performance suffers significant performance degradation under lateral c.g. variations. To mitigate this issue, a simple and computationally inexpensive adaptive block backstepping scheme is proposed and validated. The adaptation law is further proved to be able to asymptotically estimate the actual c.g. location of the UAV.

Practical implications

The proposed control scheme allows the UAV to automatically adapt to lateral c.g. variations so that the intended maneuvers are performed without any noticeable loss in maneuver performance.

Originality/value

There are very few works available in the literature that address nonlinear control designs for executing specific lateral/directional maneuvers and, moreover, they consider symmetric UAVs or aircraft only. This paper addresses the practical problem of autonomous maneuvering for UAVs with unbalanced lateral mass distribution leading to shift of c.g. out of its plane of symmetry.

Keywords

Citation

Khanna, A., Singh, N. and Mukherjee, B.K. (2022), "Adaptive block backstepping control for a UAV performing lateral maneuvers under lateral c.g. uncertainty", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 94 No. 7, pp. 1100-1108. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEAT-08-2021-0231

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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