Error-constrained path-following control for a stratospheric airship with actuator saturation and disturbances

ABSTRACT

This paper is concerned with the path-following control problem for an under-actuated stratospheric airship with error constraint, actuator saturation, and external disturbances. To address the tracking error-constrained requirements of airship position and attitude, novel tan-type barrier Lyapunov functions are proposed and incorporated with the guidance and attitude control schemes, which calculate the desired attitude and angular velocity. An auxiliary design system in the form of anti-windup compensator is employed to deal with actuator saturation, and the stability of the saturated control solution is verified. Nonlinear disturbance observer is developed to estimate the unknown external disturbances. Rigorous stability analysis shows that the constrained requirements on the airship position and attitude will not be violated under the proposed control method and all closed-loop signals are uniformly ultimately bounded, despite the presence of actuator saturation and disturbances. Simulation results and comparisons illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

KEYWORDS:

• Stratospheric airship
• path-following control
• error constraint
• actuator saturation
• disturbance observer

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 61503010], [grant number 61673034]; the Aeronautical Science Foundation of China [grant number 2016ZA51001]; the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [grant number 2017T100024]; the National Key R&D Program of China [grant number 2016YFB1200100]; and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number YWF-16-GJSYS-02].

Notes on contributors

Zewei Zheng

Zewei Zheng received B.S. degree in automatic control from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, People's Republic of China, in 2006, and Ph.D. degree in control theory and control engineering from Beihang University, Beijing, People's Republic of China, in 2012. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Beihang University from 2012 to 2014. Currently, he is an assistant professor at the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University. From 2016 to 2017, he was a visiting scholar at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests include nonlinear control system, motion control and flight control.

Liang Sun

Liang Sun received M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees, both in control theory and control engineering, from Beihang University, Beijing, People's Republic of China, in 2011 and 2015, respectively. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University. His research interests include nonlinear mechanical system control, spacecraft control, and unmanned aerial vehicle control.