Enhancing Incremental NDI Control with L1 Adaptive Augmentation in a Longitudinal Autopilot
Giorgio RAOS, Giovanni GOZZINI, Davide INVERNIZZI
Abstract. In this work the effectiveness of an adaptive control augmentation for high-performance fixed-wing aircraft is investigated. An Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) pitch rate control loop is designed within the cascade of a longitudinal autopilot. A minimally invasive L_1-adaptive controller is then designed to counteract system uncertainties and variations, with an hedging procedure that ensures bounded adaptation during saturation events. A time-domain performance analysis is performed, showing that the baseline INDI controller draws a clear benefit from the L_1-adaptive augmentation.
Keywords
Flight Dynamics, Autopilot, Flight Control System, Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion, Adaptive Control
Published online 7/20/2026, 6 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Giorgio RAOS, Giovanni GOZZINI, Davide INVERNIZZI, Enhancing Incremental NDI Control with L1 Adaptive Augmentation in a Longitudinal Autopilot, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 69, pp 868-873, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904251-153
The article was published as article 153 of the book CEAS – AIDAA Conference 2025
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
References
[1] P. Gahinet, P. Apkarian, Automated tuning of gain-scheduled control systems, 52nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (2013) pp. 2740-2745. https://doi.org/10.1109/CDC.2013.6760297
[2] S. Sieberling, Q. P. Chu, J. A. Mulder, Robust flight control using incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion and angular acceleration prediction, Journal of guidance, control, and dynamics (2010) 33(6) pp. 1732-1742. https://doi.org/10.2514/1.49978
[3] N. Hovakimyan, C. Cao, L1 adaptive control theory: Guaranteed robustness with fast adaptation. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Philadelphia, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9780898719376
[4] E. N. Johnson, A. J. Calise. Pseudo-control hedging: A new method for adaptive control. Advances in navigation guidance and control technology workshop (2000), Alabama, USA.
[5] P. Bhardwaj, V. S. Akkinapalli, J. Zhang, S. Saboo, F. Holzapfel, Adaptive augmentation of incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion controller for an extended f-16 model. AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum (2019) p. 1923. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2019-1923
