SLIDING MODE CONTROL FOR THE PATH FOLLOWING OF AN UNMANNED AIRSHIP

Project AURORA aims at the development of unmanned robotic airships capable of autonomous flight for aerial inspection and environmental monitoring missions. In this article the authors present the design of two MIMO Sliding Mode Controllers for the guidance and navigation system of the AURORA airship (for the longitudinal and lateral modes). The path tracking strategy minimizes the angular and distance tracking errors with respect to a given reference trajectory. The bounded stability of the system is proved, and the results are illustrated through a simulation example where the airship is submitted to a large airspeed variation.