Modeling and practical fixed-time attitude tracking control of a paraglider recovery system

Abstract

The mathematical modeling and the control problem of the paraglider recovery system (PRS) are investigated in this paper. A 9-degree-of-freedom dynamic model describing the paraglider recovery control system is modeled including the inside relative rotation, the apparent mass, and the payload’s time-varying inertia. On the basis of the attitude tracking error system, a novel practical fixed-time attitude tracking control approach is then proposed. The attitude tracking error is governed to converge into the small regions of the origin with a fixed-time convergence rate. Moreover, this rate is independent of any initial states. Simulation results are finally presented to illustrate the PRS performance obtained from the proposed control scheme.