Direct adaptive fuzzy control for a nonlinear helicopter system

Purpose – To design effective and practical controllers that use the adaptive fuzzy approaches and are applicable to helicopters.Design/methodology/approach – Based on Takagi‐Sugeno fuzzy systems, a new direct adaptive fuzzy control scheme is developed for a class of nonlinear multiple‐input‐multiple‐output systems. A simple observer is designed to generate an error signal for the adaptive law. The system states of the system are not required to be available for measurement.Findings – The overall adaptive scheme guarantees all the signals involved being uniformly bounded in the Lyapunov sense.Research limitations/implications – The implementation of this research work needs further investigation.Practical implications – The simplicity of the design algorithm facilitates the application of the design to helicopters by the use of Matlab.Originality/value – Experimental results of a two degree of freedom helicopter are presented to confirm the usefulness of the proposed new control scheme.