Position and Attitude Finite-Time Tracking Control of a VTOL Aircraft Using Adaptive Global Fast Terminal Sliding Mode Control

This work discusses the finite-time tracking control design for a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft under external disturbances. Considering the existence of unknown nonlinear dynamics of VTOL aircraft, the neural network is applied to tackle each unknown term. In order to cope with the approximation errors and the aircraft system's unknown disturbances, some parameter update laws are proposed during the analysis process. After that, by utilizing the neural network-based control technique and designed global fast terminal sliding mode control (FTSMC) functions, the adaptive global FTSMC laws are final presented, which can make certain that the outputs of aircraft system tracking the given trajectories, and also make certain that the tracking errors tend to zero within a finite time. At last, the validity of designed control laws is verified through a given numerical example.