Control of a thrust-vectored flying wing: a receding horizon}LPV approach

This paper deals with the application of receding horizon methods to hover and forward flight models of an experimental tethered flying wing developed at Caltech. The dynamics of the system are representative of a vertical landing and take off aircraft, such as a Harrier around hover, or a thrust-vectored aircraft such as F18-HARV or X-31 in forward flight. The adopted control methodology is a hybrid of receding horizon techniques and control Lyapunov function (CLF)-based ideas. First, a CLF is generated using quasi-LPV methods and then, by using the CLF as the terminal cost in the receding horizon optimization, stability is guaranteed. The main advantage of this approach is that stability can be guaranteed without imposing constraints in the on-line optimization, allowing the problem to be solved in a more efficient manner. Models of the experimental set-up are obtained for the hover and forward flight modes. Numerical simulations for different time horizons are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the discussed methods. Specifically, it is shown that a mere upper bound on the cost-to-go is not an appropriate choice for a terminal cost, when the horizon length is short. Simulation results are presented using experimentally verified model parameters. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.