Weak-Model-Dependent Adaptive Control of a Land-Air Amphibious Electrified Vehicle with Perturbations and Disturbances

Land-air amphibious electrified vehicles are well-suited for complex tasks in unstructured environments due to their high adaptability and maneuverability in three-dimensional space, while maintaining high energy efficiency. However, such tasks introduce significant perturbations and disturbances, challenging the vehicle stable flight control. Conventional adaptive control methods require accurate system model, which limits the control performance of the amphibious vehicle in practical applications. To address this issue, this paper proposes a weak-model-dependent adaptive control method that enables rapid estimation and compensation of the unknown time-varying perturbations and disturbances. This is achieved by directly designing a state predictor for the original open-loop unstable system without known model parameters, shaping the system into a Hurwitz stable one with desired response characteristics. Experimental tests under load perturbations, ground effect perturbations, and wind disturbances are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method outperforms the PID method by 77.6% under oscillated suspended loads, 55.5% under turbulent wind fields, and 63.2% under ground effect, while also outperforming the ADRC (active disturbance rejection control) method by 33.4%, 25.9%, and 42.8% respectively.