Design of a Fixed-Wing UAV Controller Based on Adaptive Backstepping Sliding Mode Control Method

In this paper, an advanced control method is proposed for a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to maintain the stabilization of its altitude, attitude, and velocity. The mathematical model of a fixed-wing UAV is very complicated because of its characteristics of nonlinearity and large extent of multi-variable coupling. Thus, to design the relevant controller is also difficult. In addition, during the operation of a fixed-wing UAV, the concomitant various uncertainties and disturbances will make the control process harder to accomplish. To solve these problems, this study designs a variable-structure controller with multiple algorithm fusion. The design mainly adopts the backstepping sliding mode control method to simplify the complex nonlinear mathematical model, and an adaptive law is introduced to estimate the uncertainty and disturbance of the system. Subsequently, the tracking error of the controller is proved to converge to zero using Lyapunov’s second method. Finally, it is verified that the controller has the ability to stably control a fixed-wing UAV by numerical simulation and can overcome the disturbance and uncertainty. The buffeting also can be eliminated by the adaptive law.