PVTOL Control: A Backstepping Approach

A control design to solve the regulation problem for a simplified PVTOL system strongly coupled is introduced in this paper. The proposed method is divided in two simultaneous control actions: the first one helps to stabilize the vertical position while the second one is used to do the same both the horizontal position and the angle. While the first controller uses a simple feedback-linearization by using saturation functions that assign a quasi-linear behaviour of the vertical movement, the second controller is based on a suitable backstepping procedure, which is developed to force the remaining variables to converge to the origin. Performance is tested by numerical simulations while convergence analysis is based on Lyapunov's method.