Neuroadaptive Dynamic Surface Asymptotic Tracking Control of a VTOL Aircraft with Unknown Dynamics and External Disturbances

This work studies the asymptotic tracking control problem of a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft with unknown dynamics and external disturbances. The unknown nonlinear dynamics of the VTOL aircraft are approximated via the introduction of radial basis function neural networks. Then, the weight update laws are designed. Furthermore, the parameter update control laws are presented to deal with the errors generated during the approximation process and the external disturbances of the aircraft system. Moreover, first-order filters are introduced to avoid repeated differentiation of the designed virtual control laws, thereby effectively eliminating the “complexity explosion” problem caused by traditional backstepping control. Based on the application of the neural network control method, dynamic surface control technique, weight update laws and parameter update control laws, neuroadaptive dynamic surface control laws for the aircraft system are finally proposed. Theoretical analysis shows that the proposed control law can ensure that the aircraft system asymptotically tracks the reference trajectories and the tracking errors can converge to a small neighborhood of zero by choosing the appropriate designed parameters. Finally, simulation examples are provided to verify the effectiveness of proposed control laws.