Intelligent Safety Control and Actuation Technologies for Aerospace Systems

A special issue of Actuators (ISSN 2076-0825). This special issue belongs to the section "Aerospace Actuators".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 February 2026 | Viewed by 325

Special Issue Editor

School of Intelligence Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Interests: nonlinear mechanical system control; intelligent adaptive control theory and application; space vehicle control; robot control

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Advances in aerospace vehicle systems—such as aerodynamic and orbital vehicles, hypersonic aircraft, and reusable spaceplanes—demand unprecedented reliability and precision in actuator technologies to ensure safety under extreme operational conditions. Actuators, serving as the “muscles” of aerospace control systems, must execute rapid, accurate maneuvers while withstanding thermal, mechanical, and aerodynamic stresses. This Special Issue focuses on innovative actuator technologies and intelligent control strategies that enhance safety, resilience, and adaptability in next-generation aerospace systems.

We invite contributions that address topics including (but not limited to) the following:

(1) Advanced control systems designs: Novel control-oriented dynamics modeling and simulation, high-performance dynamics controller design, multi-constraint model predictive control and optimization techniques, human–machine shared control systems, and actuator arrangement-based control command allocation.

(2) Fault-tolerant actuation: Redundant control schemes, self-diagnosis/algorithms, and real-time degradation compensation under extreme environments.

(3) AI-integrated actuator control: Machine learning for hysteresis/backlash mitigation, adaptive control under dynamic uncertainties, and physics-informed digital twins for predictive maintenance.

(4) High-fidelity simulation and validation: Multi-physics actuator modeling, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and co-simulation frameworks for safety-critical scenarios.

(5) Cross-domain applications: Actuator solutions for hypersonic flow control, re-entry vehicle stability, thrust vectoring, and autonomous rendezvous/docking.

Submissions should emphasize novel methodologies for improving actuator performance, robustness, and cybersecurity, supported by simulations or experimental validations. Both papers on theoretical breakthroughs and applied research articles are welcome, particularly those bridging automatic control theory, artificial intelligence, and aerospace engineering.

Dr. Liang Sun
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • aerospace vehicle control
  • control systems design
  • safety control
  • intelligent control
  • model predictive control
  • adaptive control
  • human–machine shared control
  • trustworthy control design and decision-making
  • machine learning
  • command allocation
  • actuator modeling, simulation, and validation

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

18 pages, 1827 KB  
Article
Adaptive Shared Trajectory Tracking Control for Output-Constrained Euler–Lagrange Systems
by Ke Tang and Liang Sun
Actuators 2025, 14(8), 383; https://doi.org/10.3390/act14080383 - 3 Aug 2025
Viewed by 233
Abstract
This study presents the state-feedback and output-feedback adaptive shared trajectory tracking control laws for nonlinear Euler–Lagrange systems subject to parametric uncertainties and output constraints framed within linear inequalities. The logarithm-driven coordinate transformation is used to ensure that system outputs are consistently bounded by [...] Read more.
This study presents the state-feedback and output-feedback adaptive shared trajectory tracking control laws for nonlinear Euler–Lagrange systems subject to parametric uncertainties and output constraints framed within linear inequalities. The logarithm-driven coordinate transformation is used to ensure that system outputs are consistently bounded by defined regions, while model-based adaptive laws are used in the machine controller to estimate and cancel parametric uncertainties and the human controller can be given arbitrarily. The stability of the whole controlled system is proved by Lyapunov stability theory, and simulation examples are used to illustrate the performance of the proposed shared control laws. Full article
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