Fault tolerant formation flight control using different adaptation techniques

Abstract

Different solutions to the problem of aerodynamic surface failure during formation flight are presented. Adaptive control laws are applied in order to compensate for surface blockages. Two different approaches are described in detail, Model Reference Adaptive Control and L1 Adaptive Control, in order to improve the fault-tolerance of a baseline controller designed with static gains. Simulation results are included, showing a substantial improvement of fault-tolerance performance when adaptive augmentation is used.