Flight validation of a metrics driven L1 adaptive control in the presence of general unmodeled dynamics

The paper summarizes the results of an ongoing effort in the development and flight validation and verification of the metrics driven L₁ adaptive flight control system. In particular, the paper develops a unified framework for design, implementation, validation and verification of flight critical control systems including: (i) definition of experimental control validation technique that accounts for generalized plant uncertainties or unmodeled dynamics; (ii) tuning the developed L₁ adaptive controller to explicitly address performance metrics in the presence of modeling uncertainties under adverse flight conditions; (iii) development of a flight control system testing environment for implementation of the resulting algorithms onboard of a small unmanned aerial vehicle; and (iv) designing and conducting of a comprehensive flight test validation and verification program that demonstrates performance of the proposed adaptive control algorithm.