A maneuver controller with disturbance attenuation for aircraft

In this paper, a maneuver controller for a nonlinear six-degree-of-freedom aircraft is designed, which makes angle-of-attack, sideslip angle, and roll rate asymptotically track the reference trajectories respectively. The design procedures for angle-of-attack and sideslip angle are based on backstepping method. Appropriate cost functions for angle-of-attack and sideslip angle are constructed to satisfy Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs (HJI) equations, thereby the tracking of the angle-of-attack and the sideslip angle attains a desired disturbance attenuation level. Simulation results on a nonlinear aircraft model are given to illustrate the performance of the maneuver controller.