Hybrid Adaptive Flight Control with Model Inversion Adaptation

Adaptive flight control is a potentially promising technology that can improve aircraft stability and maneuverability. In recent years, adaptive control has been receiving a significant amount of attention. In aerospace applications, adaptive control has been demonstrated in many flight vehicles. For example, NASA has conducted a flight test of a neural net intelligent flight control system on board a modified F-15 test aircraft (Bosworth &Williams-Hayes, 2007). The U.S. Air Force and Boeing have developed a direct adaptive controller for the Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) (Sharma et al., 2006). The ability to accommodate system uncertainties and to improve fault tolerance of a flight control system is a major selling point of adaptive control since traditional gain-scheduling control methods are viewed as being less capable of handling off-nominal flight conditions outside a normal flight envelope. Nonetheless, gain-scheduling control methods are robust to disturbances and unmodeled dynamics when an aircraft is operated as intended.