Sliding Mode Lateral Guidance and Control of Finless Airship

The path following a finless airship is presented in this paper using a nonunified sliding mode-based lateral guidance and control framework. The outer-guidance loop relies on the airship's kinematics, and the designed sliding surface is based on the leading angle that generates the heading angle reference commands. For the inner-control loop, the sliding surface is designed based on the yaw error angle generating commands by actuating the propulsion arms. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is validated by using a high-fidelity nonlinear simulation along with actuator dynamics and sensor models having measurement noises and external disturbances. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design framework compared to the classical techniques using proportional navigation in the outer-guidance loop and a linear quadratic regulator in the inner-control loop.