Numerical synthesis of nonlinear adaptive control systems for missiles

Synthesizing controls for nonlinear systems, especially adaptive controls or ones that must smoothly transition between modes of operation, is a complex task that traditionally requires extensive symbolic manipulation. The paper describes the extension of an existing set of numeric nonlinear control synthesis techniques to the formulation and solution of adaptive and mode-blending problems in missile autopilot design. The approach presented thus poses and solves the adaptive control problem as a nonlinear problem. The performance results are demonstrated on a nonlinear missile system simulation.