AIRCRAFT AUTOPILOT: Simple Approaches for designing Control Laws

This book focuses on the design of aircraft autopilots using simple tools. It emphasizes the importance of having a model of the aircraft, linearizing it, and separating longitudinal and lateral motions. Given the rapid advancements in control systems, especially with AI, revisiting conventional methods is necessary for understanding new intelligent approaches.The chosen methods prioritize simplicity and are widely used in the field.The introductory chapter outlines a model for a fixed-wing aircraft.Chapter 2 proposes a classical lateral autopilot with three cascaded loops for heading hold.Chapters 3 and 4 cover two classical longitudinal autopilots for altitude hold.The last two chapters (5 and 6) design modal autopilots for altitude and heading hold using state feedback and dominant pole placement.Matlab is used to validate the results, demonstrating the effectiveness of these simple approaches.