Precise Decoupling Tracking of Airspeed and Altitude for UAV Based on Causal Solution of Stable Inversion

Use stable inversion to accomplish precise decoupling tracking of airspeed and altitude for conventional takeoff and landing of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is in essence a non-minimum phase output tracking problem. The main contribution of this article is that a new method to calculate the causal solution of stable inversion is proposed by introducing a well defined perturbed signal to the system's unstable internal dynamics. It is helpful to overcome the pitfalls resulting from non-causality in existing methods. Different from the mathematically accurate offline non-causal solution, the causal solution is an approximation with asymptotically convergent errors. The important merits are: It obviates the needs for the output trajectory to be pre-known time parameterized functions, hence broadening the application of stable inversion; The low computational workload is much more suitable for and beneficial to real-time applications than any existing method based on stable inversion. The output tracking problem is then converted into a state tracking problem based on the causal solution of stable inversion. Precise decoupling tracking of airspeed and altitude is realized by using a feedback controller. Simulations are carried out to verify the viability and low computational workload of the method.