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Disturbance observer-based autonomous landing control of unmanned helicopters on moving shipboard

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Abstract

In this paper, the autonomous landing control issue on moving shipboard is investigated for unmanned helicopters subject to disturbances. The issue is studied by stabilizing the error system of the helicopter and the shipboard. The landing process is divided into two phases, i.e., homing phase, where a hierarchical double-loop control scheme is developed such that the helicopter is forced to hover synchronously at a certain altitude over the shipboard, and landing phase, where a composite landing control scheme is proposed such that the helicopter lands vertically on the shipboard in synchronization with its attitudes. The velocity and acceleration information of the shipboard as well as lump disturbances is estimated through joint state and disturbance observers. The estimates are then incorporated into the baseline feedback controller, formulating composite active anti-disturbance landing control schemes. A continuous terminal sliding mode control method is proposed for the feedback controller design, which not only effectively mitigates the chattering of the control action, but also simplifies the design process of the controller. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and superiorities of the proposed control schemes.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61973080 and 61973081 and in part by the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee (STIC) under Grant JCYJ20190813152603594.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Automation, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, People’s Republic of China

    Xin Yu, Jun Yang & Shihua Li

  2. Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control of Complex Systems of Engineering, Ministry of Education, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Xin Yu, Jun Yang & Shihua Li

  3. Shenzhen Research Institute, Southeast University, Shenzhen, 518063, People’s Republic of China

    Xin Yu & Jun Yang

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  1. Xin Yu
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  2. Jun Yang
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  3. Shihua Li
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Correspondence to Jun Yang.

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Yu, X., Yang, J. & Li, S. Disturbance observer-based autonomous landing control of unmanned helicopters on moving shipboard. Nonlinear Dyn 102, 131–150 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-020-05915-w

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