Adaptive Control of an Aerial Robot using Lyapunov Design

In this article, based on feedback linearization using Lyapunov design method, an adaptive controller is proposed for an Aerial Robot or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). After introducing a nonlinear dynamics model of the system in case of longitudinal equations, comparing controllers are designed to manage the system performance during various maneuvers. Also, stability analysis for the designed adaptation law is studied and discussed. To evaluate the performance of designed controllers for a given system, a comprehensive simulation program is developed. One of the most important results of this study is that tracking errors for the two state variables exponentially converge to zero, even in the presence of parameters uncertainty. Therefore, it is shown that the proposed adaptive controller is able to perform perfect path tracking maneuvers.