This paper develops a novel cascading Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) with Model Predictive Control (MPC) formulation for lateral control of a fixed wing aircraft (or&nbsp; as an unmanned aerial vehicle) in the presence of a constant load disturbance, with the consideration of actuator constraints. A constrained Quadratic Programming (QP) problem is used to solve this MPC problem, via the Primal-Dual procedure. Furthermore, a disturbance observer is utilized to estimate this disturbance so that the setpoint calculation can be adjusted accordingly. Numerical simulations demonstrate steady state tracking of the aircraft's roll angle whilst rejecting this disturbance. In addition, heading (yaw) control is implemented via the outer PID loop, and perfect tracking is achieved for this as well. Throughout the entire simulation, the aircraft's control inputs (aileron and rudder) do not violate their position and rate constraints, thus demonstrating the successful performance of the QP algorithm.As conclusions: A novel cascading PID-MPC control algorithm was developed and used to control the heading angle of the aircraft whilst simultaneously controlling the roll angle and regulating the sideslip angle, in the presence of a non-zero disturbance via a disturbance observer approach. Disturbance rejection and tracking was achieved for all CVs without requiring the use of integral action and anti-windup. In addition, the results show that the Dual Problem proves to be feasible with all the position and incremental constrains met at each time step for both actuators. Future work involves development of a fault detection and diagnosis algorithm to detect actuator faults and reconfigure the MPC appropriately.

Model Predictive Control of Fixed Wing Aircraft Using a Disturbance Observer Approach

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2021/volume/85369

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