Control of the aircraft-on-ground lateral motion during low speed roll and manoeuvers

The aim of this paper is to present the study of a yaw rate control of the aircraft-on-ground. Such a control law can ease ground handling and turn it safer. It helps to stabilize the aircraft trajectory and guarantee a predictable behavior. Due to the high non-linearities of the model, the control design methodology is based on feedback linearizing. This technique aims to design a non-linear controller that constrains the system outputs to follow a linear reference behavior. However, it supposes that the reference model perfectly corresponds to the real system. This assumption is not verified in this application (neglected dynamics, presence of saturations and high uncertainties). Nevertheless, as this article shows, maneuverability requirements can be assured in every case by slightly adapting and properly tuning the control law.