Actor-Critic-Based Optimal Adaptive Control Design for Morphing Aircraft

Abstract

An online actor-critic-based control design strategy is proposed for a variable span and sweep morphing wing aircraft considering the morphing parameters as control effectors, which makes the system non-affine in control. By adopting the dynamic property of the morphing system, the augmented morphing aircraft system is formulated to be affine in control input. Through the online actor-critic-based control design for the augmented system, the proposed method has an advantage in terms of control design for the non-affine complex system with uncertainty, because the time-varying internal dynamic model caused by the morphing system is not required. From the augmented dynamic model, the control input frequency constraints of the morphing system, which are generally considered slow can also be addressed. Numerical simulation is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.