Research on reconfigurable control for a hovering PVTOL aircraft

This paper presents a novel reconfigurable control method for the planar vertical take-off and landing (PVTOL) aircraft when actuator faults occur. According to the position subsystem within the multivariable coupling, and the series between subsystems of position and attitude, an active disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) is used to counteract the adverse effects when actuator faults occur. The controller is cascade and ensures the input value of the controlled system can be tracked accurately. The coordinate transformation method is used for model decoupling due to the severe coupling. In addition, the Taylor differentiator is designed to improve the control precision based on the detailed research for tracking differentiator. The stability and safety of the aircraft is much improved in the event of actuator faults. Finally, the simulation results are given to show the effectiveness and performance of the developed method.