Model Reference Adaptive Control for an unmanned aerial vehicle with variable-mass payloads

This paper deals with a model reference adaptive based control for an unmanned aircraft under payload variations. This situation is motivated by some tasks performed by autonomous aircrafts in precision agriculture, for example seed dispersal or spraying pesticides, where the vehicle payload is released during flight. This payload variation involves a change of the vehicle mass as well as the inertia moments. Thus, it is necessary to apply a feedback controller to counteract this phenomena while a hovering flight is performed. In this study, a backstepping-like adaptive control approach based on model reference adaptive procedure is designed. Finally, some numerical simulations to test the performance of the designed controller using MATLAB Simulink are developed.