Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2025, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (6): 2002-2014.doi: 10.12305/j.issn.1001-506X.2025.06.28

• Guidance, Navigation and Control • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Flight path following robust control method for stratospheric airship

Xinyun ZHAO, Chunlei XIE   

  1. China Academy of Aerospace Science and Innovation, Beijing 100035, China
  • Received:2024-08-23 Online:2025-06-25 Published:2025-07-09
  • Contact: Chunlei XIE

Abstract:

A flight path following robust control method for stratospheric airship is proposed to solve the problem of how to design the flight path following for stratospheric airship with large inertia, low dynamic, and the flight speed being on the same level as the environmental wind field. A stratospheric airship dynamics model with the refinement of the impact of wind disturbance is established by introducing wind disturbance force and torque models. For the wind disturbance in the guidance loop of the stratospheric airship, a line of sight guidance law with combination of the extended state observer and the fuzzy logic is presented. The extended state observer is used to estimate the ground speed side slip angle in real time, which eliminates the disturbance caused by observation error. The lock-ahead distance is adaptively adjusted based on the fuzzy logic, which reduces the oscillation when near the desired flight path, without changing the convergence speed of following errors when far away from the desired flight path. For the wind disturbance and aerodynamic parameter perturbation in the attitude control loop of the stratospheric airship, a yaw angle tracking control law is designed based on a non-singular terminal sliding mode and a fuzzy variable coefficient double power reaching law. The extended state observer is used to eliminate the negative impact of internal and external disturbances on the attitude control loop and suppress chattering. The stability of the guidance law and the attitude control law are proved based on Lyapunov theory. The rationality and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified through simulation, and it is verified that the proposed method is beneficial for improving the robustness of flight path following by comparing with traditional methods.

Key words: stratospheric airship, flight path following, line of sight guidance, extended state observer, sliding mode control

CLC Number: 

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