Application of L1 Adaptive Control Augmentation to the Flying Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

In this paper we use L1 adaptive controller to augment a baseline for improved angle of attack command tracking of a flying wing aircraft linear model. The design procedure included baseline and adaptive augmentation controllers design. Linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller was designed for the nominal case, and then was augmented with a L1 adaptive controller. The L1 adaptive control methodology offered an adaptive contributor to prevent high-frequency oscillations in the control signal. The simulation results demonstrate the fast adaptation scheme can improve transient command tracking performance, even in the presence of parametric uncertainties, and time-varying disturbances. The proposed adaptive systematic framework has satisfactory performance both in transient and steady state, as well as error signals remain bounded.