Error-constrained Moving Path-Following Control for a Stratospheric Airship

This article investigates the problem of error-constrained moving path following (EMPF) for a stratospheric airship. An airship is required to converge to and follow a time-varying desired geometric path attached to a moving frame under external disturbances without violating the tracking error constraints. A representative application of the EMPF problem is the challenging mission scenario where an airship is tasked to track tropical cyclones or ground moving targets. An EMPF controller is proposed for stratospheric airships with external disturbances based on the adaptive backstepping technique combined with barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) and line-of-sight (LOS) guidance law. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed EMPF control method.