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Trajectory tracking control of powered parafoil without velocity feedback

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Abstract

High-precision trajectory tracking control of the powered parafoil (PPF) has been a challenging problem due to the nonlinear characteristics and multiple internal and external disturbances. Considering the nonlinearity and the cross-coupling dynamics between the control inputs of the PPF, the active disturbance compensation-based sliding mode control (SMC) strategy is proposed. The trajectory tracking control of the PPF is decomposed into lateral and longitudinal control channels, and the proposed controllers for each channel are designed separately. By applying the linear extended state observer (LESO), the nonlinear dynamics, cross-coupling effect and external wind disturbances are estimated and compensated as the total disturbance in each channel. To tackle the residual estimation error of the total disturbance, the SMC is applied. With the elaborately designed sliding manifold, the proposed method only requires the heading angle and altitude as feedbacks for the lateral and longitudinal control channels, respectively, while the angular velocity and horizontal velocity are not required. Specifically, both control channels are proved to be stable based on Lyapunov method. Simulation and semi-physical experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and superior control performance over other existing method.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62103204, 61973172 and 61973175) and the keyTechnologies Research and Development Program of Tianjin (Grant No. 19JCZDJC32800).

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Panlong Tan, Zengqiang Chen, Qinglin Sun & Xiaoyu Zhang

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  1. Panlong Tan
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  2. Zengqiang Chen
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Correspondence to Xiaoyu Zhang.

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Tan, P., Chen, Z., Sun, Q. et al. Trajectory tracking control of powered parafoil without velocity feedback. Nonlinear Dyn 111, 15023–15035 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-023-08619-z

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