A crosswind perturbed PVTOL aircraft robust global control solution for the trajectory tracking problem

This study solves the trajectory-tracking control problem for a crosswind-perturbed crewless PVTOL aircraft. The proposed globally feedback-based solution consists of two parts: one makes the aircraft’s horizontal and vertical position accelerations convenient, ensuring no singularities in the closed-loop system. To accomplish the control task, two controllers were designed: a continuous controller to ensure the aircraft tracks the trajectory, and a discontinuous integral-adaptive sliding-mode controller to counteract the destabilizing crosswind effect. The first controller was designed using a simple backstepping approach, with a saturation function replacing linear control to avoid singular points. The second controller was designed using Lyapunov functions and Barbalat’s lemma. The solution’s performance was tested through numerical simulations, yielding convincing results.