Direct-adaptive fuzzy path following control for an autonomous airship

A direct-adaptive fuzzy path following control method for an autonomous airship is presented, which comprises path following control and adaptive fuzzy control. Firstly, based on the planar dynamic model of the airship, the path following control is designed consisting of guidance law, yaw tracking and velocity control. Then, a direct-adaptive fuzzy controller is constructed to approximate the unknown terms caused by system model uncertainties and external disturbances. It is proved that the proposed controller can make the airship track the desired path and force the tracking error to converge to a small neighborhood of the origin. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.