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DDPG-based active disturbance rejection 3D path-following control for powered parafoil under wind disturbances

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Abstract

The utilization of parafoil systems in both military and civilian domains exhibits a high degree of application potential, owing to their remarkable load-carrying capacity, consistent flight dynamics, and extended flight endurance. The performance and safety of powered parafoils during the flight are directly contingent upon the efficacy of the control system employed. For powered parafoils, the direction is controlled by steering ropes connecting to the edges of the parafoil canopy. And a propeller attached to the back of the payload controls the flight height. However, strong couplings exist between two control channels, which makes controlling powered parafoil systems challenging, especially under wind disturbances. This paper aims to address these challenges by proposing a three-dimensional (3D) path-following control method for powered parafoils. To this end, the lateral and altitude path-following controllers were designed to solve this problem based on linear active disturbance rejection control (LADRC) with disturbance rejection and decoupling features. Furthermore, the adaptive parameters of these two controllers were obtained through the implementation of deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG). The efficacy of the proposed DDPG-LADRC approach was then evaluated through simulations of 3D path tracking, including both straight and circular paths, while also taking into account wind disturbances to assess its anti-disturbance capability. The results of these simulations indicate that the proposed method effectively realizes the 3D path following control of powered parafoils.

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Data Availability Statement

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Numbers 61973172, 61973175, 62003175, 62003177, and 62073177], the National Key Research and Development Project [Grant Number 2019YFC1510900], and the Key Technologies Research and Development Program of Tianjin [Grant Number 19JCZDJC32800]. This project was also funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [Grant Number 2020M670633] and the Tianjin Research Innovation Project for Postgraduate Students [2021YJSB084]. We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Artificial Intelligence, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300350, China

    Yuemin Zheng, Qinglin Sun, Hao Sun, Mingwei Sun & Zengqiang Chen

  2. Silo AI, 00100, Helsinki, Finland

    Jin Tao

  3. Department of Textile Management and Product Design, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts et Industries Textiles, 59100, Roubaix, France

    Xianyi Zeng

Authors
  1. Yuemin Zheng
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  2. Jin Tao
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  3. Qinglin Sun
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  4. Xianyi Zeng
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  5. Hao Sun
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  6. Mingwei Sun
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  7. Zengqiang Chen
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Formal analysis, Software and visualization were performed by YZ. Validation, writing-review & editing were performed by QS, XZ and HS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by YZ and JT. Conceptualization was performed by MS and ZC. Supervision was performed by XZ. And all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jin Tao or Qinglin Sun.

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Zheng, Y., Tao, J., Sun, Q. et al. DDPG-based active disturbance rejection 3D path-following control for powered parafoil under wind disturbances. Nonlinear Dyn 111, 11205–11221 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-023-08444-4

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