On the Performance of the Model-Free Adaptive Control For A Novel Moving-Mass Controlled Flying Robot.

In this paper, the performance of Model-Free Adaptive Control (MFAC) has been investigated on a novel and specific moving-mass controlled (MMC) flying robot system. The novel one-degree-of-freedom (1 DOF) MMC flying robot test bed presented in this paper has highly nonlinear and slow dynamics with a variable center of gravity (CoG) and moment of inertia. This makes the control of this system a challenging problem. One of the solutions to this challenge is the use of data-driven control methods, in particular, MFAC. This controller uses a data-driven model to control the system using only input and output (I/O) data. This paper compares this data-driven controller with proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control, and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) as two model-free and model-based controllers which are widely used controllers in industry. The results of the comparison show that in the various scenarios applied, MFAC has a clear superiority over the PID and LQR, and its adaptive structure gives more freedom of action in the implementation of different scenarios and the presented noise. The results are obtained using the Integral Time Absolute Error (ITAE) criteria and the mean maximum error has also been compared in a Monte Carlo analysis. For a more detailed study, the amount of control energy consumption was also compared, which showed a clear superiority of the MFAC. Also, the robustness of the controller was demonstrated by introducing uncertainty in the plant parameters and by running 100 Monte Carlo simulations with random initial conditions. Finally, despite the PID controller, the MFAC followed the desired scenarios well and compared to LQR consumed less energy. The results demonstrate that the MFAC outperformed the PID and LQR controllers in the presence of random initial conditions and noise in terms of mean maximum error (70.4 %) , mean ITAE (91 %) , and energy consumption (46 %) . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]