Aerodynamic-driven active maneuver morphing and flight control of multi-body full-wing layout UAV with disturbance and model uncertainty

The ultra-high aspect ratio multi-body full-wing layout unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has advantages in long-endurance flight and mission flexibility, and thus has development potential. The multi-body connection mode and special full-wing layout unit make the dynamic characteristics and control scheme of this type of combined unmanned aerial vehicle special. In this paper, firstly, the multi-body flight dynamics model is established. Then, practical fixed time sliding mode control methods with adaptive laws are designed for aerodynamic-driven morphing-attitude control, and a fixed time control method with fixed-time observer is designed for airspeed control. The stability is guaranteed based on the Lyapunov theory. Furthermore, the observer-based fixed-time height controller and vector field-based horizontal straight-line path following controller are given to obtain actual pitch and yaw angle tracking commands for mission flight. Finally, multiple sets of numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the superiorities and effectiveness of the proposed aerodynamic-driven active maneuver morphing and flight control in the presence of disturbance and model uncertainty.