Robust trajectory tracking of unstable aircraft with measurement delay

Trajectory tracking control is investigated for an open-loop unstable aircraft with delayed external measurement in this paper. The bounded measurement delay is unknown and variant. The trajectory signal is generated by a reference system. By using a Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and linear matrix inequality technique, a delay-dependent criterion and the corresponding robust trajectory tracking control scheme are presented. The controller can reduce the undesirable delay effects and guarantee the boundedness of tracking error. The results with application to HiMAT (highly maneuverable technology) aircraft have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach.