Autonomous Path Tracking of a Kinematic Airship in Presence of Unknown Gust

The trajectory tracking problem of autonomous lighter than air vehicles in the presence of wind gusts is studied in this paper. The airship is represented as one point which is its center of volume, and only the kinematic equations are considered for the path tracking design. The control algorithm uses the Lyapunov theory and the Sontag’s universal stabilizing feedback. The proposed control laws are robust, by construction, with respect to uncertainties in the model and unknown external parameters. Numerical simulations are carried out to illustrate the performance of the proposed control strategy.

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