Robust fractional-order adaptive gain-scheduled control strategy for civil unmanned aerial vehicle with LPV models

Abstract Recently, autonomous aerial systems have received unparalleled popularity and applications as varied as they are innovative in the civil domain. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is now the subject of intensive research in both aeronautical and automotive engineering. This paper presents a new, robust gain-scheduled adaptive control strategy for a class of UAV with linear parameter varying (LPV) models. The proposed controller synthesis involves a set of pre-tuned linear quadratic regulator (LQR) combined with fractional-order PID controllers supervised with an adaptive switching law. The main innovation in this work is the enhancement of the classical gain-scheduling adaptive control robustness for systems with LPV models by combining a set of robust LQR + fractional-order PID compensators. The stability of the resulting controller is demonstrated and its efficiency is validated using a numerical simulation example on a civilian UAV system airspeed and altitude control to illustrate its practical efficiency and achieved robustness.