L1 Adaptive Control of the Flying Wing UAV with Unknown Time-varying Disturbances

In this paper, we applied the L-1 adaptive controller to a flying wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with time-varying unknown parameters to verify the fast adaption and robustness of the system tracking performance. We derive the linear model from the nonlinear representations of the UAV dynamics, after which the principles and characteristics of the L-1 adaptive controller are demonstrated. The linear quadratic regulator is applied to the obtained linear model before we implement the proposed L-1 adaptive controller. Simulation results involve the longitudinal and lateral-directional dynamics control, where the proposed control strategy is proved to have satisfactory transient and steady state performance in the application of the flying wing UAV.