We apply adaptive control to an unconventional aircraft, namely, a three-rotor flight vehicle, one of whose rotors can tilt about the longitudinal axis of the fuselage. This combination of actuators has aerodynamic advantages but also poses challenges in terms of trimming the aircraft in order to balance the torque about the roll, pitch, and yaw axes. The paper uses retrospective cost adaptive control (RCAC) to trim the aircraft in hover as well as to follow straight-line and circular flight trajectories.
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