Comparison of the UAV adaptive control with the robust control based on mu-synthesis

In this paper, dynamic model of the flying-wing UAV in the roll channel was estimated from the flight-test data based upon the method of regularized recursive least squares algorithm. Flight-test data were obtained for the closed-loop system with PID controller. Then adaptive control system was synthesized based upon the Tikhonov's regularization method and the maximum principle. On the other hand, the linear model for the roll channel was determined, and robust control was synthesized based upon the mu-synthesis method. A comparative analysis of these two methods of control synthesis was done in the presence of various uncertainties and external disturbances and constraints on the control signal. The results showed that increasing of the range of changes for the airspeed and roll angle increases non-linearity of the system and affects the efficiency and performance of the robust control based upon mu-synthesis technology. Thus, the adaptive control is advisable to apply to the systems with a large range of parameter changes in order to avoid the sustainable oscillations in system.