Prescribed-time error-constrained moving path following control for a stratospheric airship with disturbances

This paper presents an innovative prescribed-time moving path following control strategy for a stratospheric airship subject to time-varying error constraints and external disturbances. With the help of a new time-varying constraining function, the strict constraint requirements on initial conditions of the system are relaxed. A novel error transformation mechanism is incorporated into the guidance method to tackle the error constraint. The constructed prescribed-time disturbance observer can provide estimates of unknown disturbances and model dynamic couplings within the predefined time. The proposed scheme guarantees that the predetermined precision requirement can be implemented within the prespecified settling time regardless of initial conditions. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented control strategy.