Erfan Arefi - Young Researchers and Elite Club, Sirjan branch, Islamic Azad University, Sirjan, Iran

In this paper, a design of autopilot for a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft to track a predetermined desired flight path is examined. This system is a nonlinear non-minimum phase system. Since this aircraft faces to external distributions (e.g. wind) in flight, so designing of a controller with robust performance is critical to achievean optimal flight performance, despite presence of the external distributions. For this purpose, the dynamic sliding mode technique which is a robust method in the controller designing for nonlinear systems with uncertainties is used. By using the above method, the autopilot control law is designed in such a way that the aircraft tracksthe predetermined optimal paths (which are determined on type of aircraft missions). Simulations show effectiveness of the proposed control law

VTOL aircraft, dynamic sliding mode control, robust control