Adaptive Parameter Estimation and Velocity Control of UAV Systems

This paper presents an adaptive velocity control method for small UAV systems. In the design, an adaptive parameter estimation with prescribed performance is introduced to online estimate the model parameters of UAVs. The velocity control parameters are adaptively updated in terms of the variations of the flight dynamics to improve the UAV flight performance. We identify the UAV's model through an adaptive estimator and then adaptively tune the controller parameters, which will overcome the variations of model parameters and extern disturbances. Finally, the simulation results verify that the adaptive velocity control system has better control performance than the conventional PID velocity control system.