Two-rate motion control of VTAV by NARMA-L2 controller for enhanced situational awareness

This paper focuses on a critical component of the situational awareness (SA), the motion control of autonomous vertical flight for vectored thrust aerial vehicle (VTAV). With the SA strategy, we proposed a two-rate flight control procedure using two autonomous control subsystems to address the dynamics variation and performance requirement difference in initial and final stages of flight trajectory for a nontrivial VTAV type mini-aircraft model. This control strategy with using of NARMA-L2 neurocontroller for chosen model of VTAV has been verified by simulation of take-off and forward maneuvers using software package Simulink and demonstrated good performance for fast stabilization of motors, consequently, fast SA with economy in energy can be asserted during search-and-rescue operations.