A Waypoint Following Control Design for a Paraglider Model With Aerodynamic Uncertainty

This paper presents a waypoint following control design for a powered paraglider (PPG) model. After constructing a dynamic model with six degrees of freedom of the PPG, a dynamical lateral model around a trim equilibrium in the steady-state flight is obtained. Unknown parameters, such as the moment of inertia, the drag coefficient, etc., in the lateral model are optimized by real flight experimental data. The model output with the optimized parameters agrees with the real flight experimental data. Since the aerodynamics-related parameter, i.e., the drag coefficient, might be slightly changed even near the considered trim equilibrium, this paper considers its uncertainty in the constructed lateral model. A nonlinear controller to stabilize the lateral model (with the aerodynamic uncertainty) on a considered operation domain is designed by solving robust controller design conditions expressed in terms of linear matrix inequality. The experimental results including automatic landing demonstrate the effectiveness of the control system design framework, i.e., the model construction and the robust stable control, considering the model uncertainty.