Towards Intelligent Fault-Tolerant Attitude Flight Control of Fixed-Wing Aircraft
↳ Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, Springer Nature, International Conference in Navigation Guidance and Control (ICGNC)
// abstract
Submitted as part of the author's master's thesis, this work investigates reinforcement-learning approaches for fault-tolerant attitude flight control of fixed-wing aircraft. The goal is an intelligent controller that adapts to actuator faults and disturbances while maintaining stable attitude tracking, moving toward more resilient flight-control systems for autonomous aircraft.
// highlights
- Applies reinforcement learning to attitude flight control of fixed-wing aircraft.
- Targets fault-tolerant control that adapts to actuator faults and disturbances.
// notes
This study advances flight control systems by integrating deep reinforcement learning to enhance fault tolerance in fixed-wing aircraft. We assess the efficiency of Cross-Entropy Method Reinforcement Learning (CEM-RL) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithms in developing an adaptive stable attitude controller. Our proposed frameworks, focusing on smooth actuator control, showcase improved robustness across standard and fault-induced scenarios. The algorithms demonstrate unique traits in terms of trade-offs between trajectory tracking and control smoothness. Our approach that results in state-of-the-art performance with respect to benchmarks, presents a leap forward in autonomous aviation safety.
keywords: flight control, fault-tolerance, robustness, reinforcement learning, evolutionary strategies, stability, control smoothness
// bibtex
@inproceedings{zongo2025towards,
title = {Towards Intelligent Fault-Tolerant Attitude Control of Fixed-Wing Aircraft},
author = {Zongo, Alex B. and Qing, Li},
booktitle = {Advances in Guidance, Navigation and Control (ICGNC 2024)},
series = {Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering},
volume = {1353},
year = {2025},
publisher = {Springer, Singapore},
doi = {10.1007/978-981-96-2264-1_15}
}// cite
Zongo, A.B., Qing, L. (2025). "Towards Intelligent Fault-Tolerant Attitude Control of Fixed-Wing Aircraft." In: Yan, L., Duan, H., Deng, Y. (eds).Advances in Guidance, Navigation and Control. ICGNC 2024. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 1353. Springer, Singapore.