Robust and adaptive control of a novel ducted fan vehicle in the presence of actuator uncertainties and saturation

This paper provides a rigorous steps for controller design of a novel ducted fan vehicle under actuator uncertainties and saturation. Considering uncertain actuator dynamics, a control-oriented model is proposed to provide convenience for practical control applications. A structured robust controller that stabilizes the vehicle in the presence of actuator uncertainties and external disturbances is designed using parametric robust control tuning algorithm. Subject to input saturation, adaptive control is applied as an augmentation of the structured robust controller. Simulation results reveal that our method is able to keep fast reference tracking speed and strong ability to reject disturbance even with large uncertainties, and system performance is further improved by the adopted adaptive control law when actuator saturation is active.