Adaptive Trajectory Tracking Control of a High Altitude Unmanned Airship

Nonlinear dynamic model of a high-altitude unmanned airship, expressed by generalized coordinate, was built. A nonlinear compensation was introduced into the control loop to linearize and decouple the nonlinear system globally. In view of the imprecisely known inertia parameters of the airship, an adaptive law was proposed based on the feedback linearization to realize asymptotic tracking of any continuous time-varying desired trajectory from an arbitrary initial condition. The stability of the closed-loop control system was proved via the use of Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, numerical simulation results demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed adaptive control law.