Lateral Control of Airship with Uncertain Dynamics using Incremental Nonlinear Dynamics Inversion

This paper addresses the lateral control of an underactuated airship with uncertain dynamics model. It proposes an incremental nonlinear dynamics inversion (INDI) approach to successfully achieve the system desired behavior without requiring the knowledge and realtime feedback of the airship state-only dependent dynamics, namely kinematics, gravitational and (part of) aerodynamic forces, mandatory for model-based control strategies. The stability and robustness of the proposed sensor-based control solution are assessed with representative simulation results, including wind disturbances and a path following loop.