Error-constrained path-following control for a stratospheric airship with actuator saturation and disturbances

This paper is concerned with the path-following control problem for an under-actuated stratospheric airship with error constraint, actuator saturation, and external disturbances. To address the tracking error-constrained requirements of airship position and attitude, novel tan-type barrier Lyapunov functions are proposed and incorporated with the guidance and attitude control schemes, which calculate the desired attitude and angular velocity. An auxiliary design system in the form of anti-windup compensator is employed to deal with actuator saturation, and the stability of the saturated control solution is verified. Nonlinear disturbance observer is developed to estimate the unknown external disturbances. Rigorous stability analysis shows that the constrained requirements on the airship position and attitude will not be violated under the proposed control method and all closed-loop signals are uniformly ultimately bounded, despite the presence of actuator saturation and disturbances. Simulation results and comparisons illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.