An Underactuated Control System Design for Adaptive Autopilot of Fixed-Wing Drones

Effective design of autopilots for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is still a great challenge, due to unmodeled effects and uncertainties that these exhibit during flight. Unmodeled comprise longitudinal/lateral cross-couplings, as well poor knowledge equilibrium points (trimming points) the UAV dynamics. The main contribution this article new adaptive autopilot design, based on uncertain Euler–Lagrange dynamics where control can explicitly take into account under-actuation in dynamics, reduced structural cross-couplings trimming points. This system uncertainty handled via appropriately designed laws: stability controlled analyzed. Hardware-in-the-loop tests, comparisons with an Ardupilot robustified validate effectiveness even presence strong saturation actuators.