Attitude Control of Uncertain Helicopters with Actuator Dynamics

Abstract

Unlike previous chapters, which consider actuators with instantaneous response, Chapter 6 deals with a more realistic scenario where actuator dynamics are present. Backstepping technique, combined with NNs, is employed to design the robust attitude control for uncertain multi-input multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear helicopter dynamics. To the best of our knowledge, there are few works in the literature that take the actuator dynamics into account in the helicopter control, which is practically relevant but more challenging as well. In this chapter, helicopter models are considered as MIMO nonlinear dynamic systems, where the actuator dynamics in the first-order low-pass filter form are considered. Secondly, the possible singularity problem of the control coefficient matrix for the model-based attitude control case is tackled effectively by introducing a design matrix. Thirdly, approximation-based attitude control is developed to handle the model uncertainties (e.g., unknown moment coefficients and mass) and external disturbances. Rigorous stability analysis and extensive simulations results show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed attitude control.