Robust adaptive control with lumped model uncertainty and wind disturbance estimation for airship trajectory tracking

The robotic airship can be used as an aerostatic platform for many potential applications, for example, communication, hovering payload deliveries, data-gathering for research studies, etc. These applications require a fully autonomous perspective of an airship. One of the important aspects of airship autonomy is trajectory tracking control. An airship has complex and uncertain nonlinear dynamics which pose a major challenge for designing a precise trajectory tracking control. This paper addresses the airship trajectory tracking control problem under model uncertainties and wind disturbance. We propose a lumped model uncertainties and wind disturbance estimation approach based on an unscented Kalman filter. The estimated lumped uncertainty is used by the Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) for ultimate control of airship trajectory tracking. This comprehensive algorithm, Unscented Kalman filter-based Sliding Mode Controller (USMC), is used as a robust adaptive control solution to track the desired trajectory. The stability and convergence of the proposed method are investigated using the Lyapunov stability analysis. Simulation results show that the proposed method efficiently tracks the desired trajectory. The method solves the stability, convergence, and chattering problem of SMC without the bound constraint of model uncertainties and wind disturbance.