Robust Control of Aircraft under Exogenous Disturbances or System Uncertainties

Dear Colleagues,

Aircraft control has been a subject that has been investigated for years by the researchers of several fields, including airspace, mechanical engineering, computer science, electrical engineering and control. However, interest in developing state-of-the-art techniques to stabilize aircrafts susceptible to realistic uncertainties has grown in recent years. Examples of state-of-the-art cases are multi-rotors with manipulator devices, VTOLs stabilization in hover or even during transition flight mode, fixed-wing under windy conditions and tail-sitters in delivering tasks where the payload considerably changes its flight dynamics. Such novel applications and needs demand a new generation of robust algorithms capable of coping with parameter uncertainties, variation in aerodynamics under different flight regimes, exogenous disturbances and even faulty systems. 

This Special Issue is devoted to collecting state-of-the-art research on aircraft control under unknown exogenous disturbances or parametric variations. The aircraft can be of any type, such as fixed-wing, rotorcraft, multi-rotors, VTOLs, new configurations or rockets. Practical articles are welcomed, although theoretical results with simulations will also follow in the Special Issue. The proposed techniques can be of any type: feedback control, artificial intelligence-based algorithms, reinforcement learning or a combination of these and other approaches. The proposed approach can estimate the disturbances or uncertainties presented in the aircraft or propose controllers capable of rejecting or coping with them without estimating them. To mention some examples of interesting research for this Special Issue, we present the following non-exhaustive list of approaches:

• Fixed-wing aircraft control under wind disturbances;
• Multi-rotors with arms of any device that may disturb the closed-loop system behavior;
• Sliding mode control;
• Active disturbance rejection control;
• Deep learning for uncertainties estimation;
• Genetic algorithms in aircraft control;
• Neural control;
• Output feedback control;
• Adaptive algorithms for aircraft stabilization;
• New model approaches considering uncertainties;
• Non-model-based controllers;
• Applications in real scenarios;
• Aircraft under actuator or sensor faults.

Of interest are papers that address disturbed or uncertain nonlinear flight regimes in tasks, such as guidance, navigation, real-time flight control synthesis, control allocation and reconfiguration, to mention a few.

In addition to fundamental and practical research, papers that present an in-depth study of the state of the art in the subject of this Special Issue will be well received.

Dr. Gerardo Flores
Dr. Mihai Lungu
Guest Editors

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