A robust adaptive control approach to missile autopilot design

Abstract

The huge developments in computational capabilities facilitate the design and implementation of adaptive and robust control. Furthermore, the great developments in nanotechnology and its availability in civilian level with less cost, weight, and size attract the researchers all over the world towards embedded systems especially the embedded flight control. One of the real applications are the guided missiles especially the anti-tank guided missile systems which are launched against the ground and short-range targets and is called command line of sight. The present work is concerned with improving the performance of an anti-tank guided missile system belonging to the first generation via adaptive synthesis of guidance systems. The online system identification is required to complete the cycle of adaptive autopilot design. This paper is devoted to designing an adaptive autopilot for the intended system using model reference and self-tuning regulator with justification against previous work and reference flight data concerning the performance requirements of time responses and flight path characteristics. The new design is implemented within the 6-DOF simulation from which the obtained results clarify its capability to stabilize the system in presence of unmodeled dynamics and satisfy the performance requirements with disturbance rejection and measurement noise attenuation. Also, the flight path is evaluated considering the HIL environment.