A practical approach to motion control for planar multi-rigid-body systems

This research is focused on developing a practical motion control approach, which can greatly simplify the control-oriented modeling and improve the control performance. For any dynamical system which meets the requirements, all necessary dynamics information is deduced in a general form as two matrices, which skillfully avoids the complicated modeling of multi-rigid-body dynamics. The other information, such as un-modeled dynamics and uncertain disturbances, is treated as a generalized total disturbance, estimated by an extended state observer and compensated by a simple controller. A standardizing controller is designed to convert any dynamical system into a standardized model so that the extended state observer can be constructed in a general form. The approach is applied to the control system design of an in-plane morphing wing and morphing aircraft in pitch plane, and multidisciplinary joint simulations are performed. The proposed approach is validated with the following advantages: simplicity and effectiveness in control-oriented dynamical modeling and controller tuning; universality for a certain class of planar multi-rigid-body systems; practicality for engineers and interdisciplinary researchers of mechanics and control.