New Sights of Intelligent Robust Control in Aerospace

A special issue of Aerospace (ISSN 2226-4310).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 3861

Special Issue Editors

Institute of artificial Intelligence, Beihang University, Beijing, China
Interests: robust control; aerospace control; formation control; reinforcement learning
Harbin Institute of Technology, School of Astronautics, Harbin, China
Interests: flight control; intelligent control; robot systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Automation, Central South University, Changsha, China
Interests: trajectory planning; intelligent autonomous control
School of Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China
Interests: nonlinear robust control; advanced flight control; optimal control

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on innovative advancements and research developments in intelligent, robust control within the aerospace sector. Intelligent, robust control refers to using artificial intelligence and advanced control techniques to accomplish the control objectives for uncertain systems without resorting to an accurate system model. It collects information from actual data and experience and focuses on utilizing data generated during the operation of an uncertain system to learn its behavior and performance, enabling the formulation of more adaptive and intelligent control strategies. Intelligent, robust control has the advantages of effectively handling complex systems with multiple variables, nonlinear behaviors, and uncertain features, optimizing control strategies to achieve specific objectives, and continuously improving performance by learning from data and past experiences. Typical intelligent, robust control includes machine learning, fuzzy logic control, reinforcement learning, model predictive control, and genetic algorithms. In recent years, significant progress has been made in learning-based algorithms. Learning-based algorithms can be combined with robust control to realize adaptive robust control, which plays a role in aerospace control. However, intelligent, robust control and its practical applications in aerospace remain an open problem. Potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Intelligent, robust control of unmanned aerial vehicles;
  • Learning-based control algorithms on guidance and navigation of aerospace systems;
  • Decision-making and model-free control of complex, uncertain systems;
  • Adaptive and robust control for complex systems with data-driven control algorithms;
  • Fault detection and fault tolerant control for complex systems with intelligent, robust control;
  • Learning-based enabled attack-resilient control of aerospace systems against attacks;
  • Robust control of uncertain, complex systems in the presence of actuator saturation;
  • Path planning of aerospace vehicles with data-driven control algorithms;
  • Task allocation and cooperative execution for multiple unmanned systems with learning-based control algorithms;
  • Robust autonomous driving in complex traffic environment.

Dr. Hao Liu
Dr. Zhan Li
Dr. Yuxin Liao
Dr. Zhong Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Aerospace is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • robust control
  • intelligent control
  • learning-based control
  • aerospace control
  • unmanned aerial systems

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

30 pages, 3301 KB  
Article
Stubborn Composite Disturbance Observer-Based MPC for Spacecraft Systems: An Event-Triggered Approach
by Jianlin Chen, Lei Liu, Yang Xu and Yang Yu
Aerospace 2025, 12(11), 1010; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace12111010 - 12 Nov 2025
Viewed by 637
Abstract
This paper studies spacecraft control under communication congestion, multi-source uncertainties, and input constraints. To reduce communication load, a static event-triggered mechanism is used so that transmissions occur only when necessary. Unknown nonlinearities are estimated online by a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN). [...] Read more.
This paper studies spacecraft control under communication congestion, multi-source uncertainties, and input constraints. To reduce communication load, a static event-triggered mechanism is used so that transmissions occur only when necessary. Unknown nonlinearities are estimated online by a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN). To address sensor outliers and external disturbances, an event-triggered stubborn composite disturbance observer (ESCDO) is proposed, and sufficient conditions are derived to ensure its globally uniformly bounded stability. Based on this, an MPC-based composite anti-disturbance controller is designed to satisfy input constraints, and conditions are provided to guarantee the uniform bounded stability of the closed loop. Numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Sights of Intelligent Robust Control in Aerospace)
Show Figures

Figure 1

25 pages, 3959 KB  
Article
Robust Adaptive Trajectory Tracking Control for Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
by Yang Sun, Decai Huang, Zongying Shi and Yisheng Zhong
Aerospace 2025, 12(11), 980; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace12110980 - 31 Oct 2025
Viewed by 1183
Abstract
Accurate trajectory tracking is crucial for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in executing diverse missions. However, the inherent strong nonlinearities, parametric uncertainties, and external disturbances in the UAV model present significant challenges for controller design. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a [...] Read more.
Accurate trajectory tracking is crucial for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in executing diverse missions. However, the inherent strong nonlinearities, parametric uncertainties, and external disturbances in the UAV model present significant challenges for controller design. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a robust adaptive control strategy based on the backstepping technique. The proposed strategy effectively addresses a class of uncertainties with norm bounds that are unknown and state-dependent. An adaptive law is constructed to estimate the unknown parameters online, thereby enabling compensation for the effects of these uncertainties. Furthermore, to mitigate chattering, the controller is modified to generate smooth control inputs, ensuring that the steady-state tracking error is ultimately bounded and converges to an arbitrarily small neighborhood of zero. Simulation results demonstrate that, under realistic flight control sampling frequencies, the proposed controller achieves accurate trajectory tracking and eliminates the chattering phenomenon. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Sights of Intelligent Robust Control in Aerospace)
Show Figures

Figure 1

20 pages, 1803 KB  
Article
Prediction of the Drogue Position in Autonomous Aerial Refueling Based on a Physics-Informed Neural Network
by Xin Bao, Yan Li and Zhong Wang
Aerospace 2025, 12(6), 540; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace12060540 - 14 Jun 2025
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1063
Abstract
Autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) technology is of crucial importance in the aviation field. Accurately predicting the position of the refueling drogue is a core challenge in implementing this technology. An innovative method of a physics-informed neural network (PINN), a fusion of supervised learning [...] Read more.
Autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) technology is of crucial importance in the aviation field. Accurately predicting the position of the refueling drogue is a core challenge in implementing this technology. An innovative method of a physics-informed neural network (PINN), a fusion of supervised learning and unsupervised learning, integrating physical information with an attention-augmented long short-term memory (AALSTM) neural network is proposed. By constructing a physical model of the refueling drogue, accurate physical constraints are provided for the prediction model. Meanwhile, an AALSTM neural network architecture is designed to predict partial states of the refueling drogue and parameters of the dynamic model. An attention-augmented mechanism is introduced to enhance the ability to capture key information. Simulation experiments verify that introducing an attention-augmented mechanism based on the conventional LSTM can improve prediction accuracy. The PINN significantly outperforms the conventional LSTM method in prediction accuracy, providing strong support for the development of AAR technology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Sights of Intelligent Robust Control in Aerospace)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop