Overcoming Fundamental Control Limitations in Powered Descent Flight through Robust Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion
Abstract
This work identifies a fundamental, controller-independent limitation in reusable launch vehicle powered descent: a sudden 180∘ phase transition in the open-loop transfer functions from the control inputs to the lateral drift and drift rate. The transition occurs inside the flight envelope, reverses the effective control direction, and can destabilize the closed loop system under uncertainty. An analytical condition governing this transition is derived, its physical mechanism is established, and its dependence on vehicle mass, aerodynamic properties, and geometry is characterized. An Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI)-based control architecture is then developed to inherently address this limitation and is tuned via ℋ∞ Closed Loop Shaping to provide local robustness and performance guarantees. The internal dynamics introduced by the INDI inversion are analytically derived and proven to be stable throughout the flight envelope. The proposed controller is compared against a robust gain-scheduled baseline controller through linear stability analysis and an extensive nonlinear Monte Carlo campaign. Both controllers achieve 100% success across the considered Monte Carlo campaign, though the INDI-based controller provides improved tracking performance, superior nominal and dispersed stability margins, requires fewer controller design points, and reduces controller tuning complexity.
Related
- Overcoming the Representational Limitations of Amplitude Encoding for Quantum Neural Networks
- Quaternionic and Octonionic Frameworks for Quantum Computation: Mathematical Structures, Models, and Fundamental Limitations
- Overcoming the spatial order barrier for nonlinear SPDEs with additive space-time white noise
- On the numerical limitations of dual Koopman von Neumann embeddings for solving conservative nonlinear ordinary differential equations on quantum computers
- Incremental effects for continuous exposures
BibTeX
@misc{diz2026overcoming,
title = {{Overcoming Fundamental Control Limitations in Powered Descent Flight through Robust Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion}},
author = {João T. Diz and Paulo Rosa and Pedro Simplício and Paul Acquatella and Erik-Jan van Kampen and Spilios Theodoulis},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.08121},
eprint = {2611.08121},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08121},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Overcoming Fundamental Control Limitations in Powered Descent Flight through Robust Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion
AU - João T. Diz
AU - Paulo Rosa
AU - Pedro Simplício
AU - Paul Acquatella
AU - Erik-Jan van Kampen
AU - Spilios Theodoulis
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.08121
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08121
AB - This work identifies a fundamental, controller-independent limitation in reusable launch vehicle powered descent: a sudden 180^∘ phase transition in the open-loop transfer functions from the control inputs to the lateral drift and drift rate. The transition occurs inside the flight envelope, reverses the effective control direction, and can destabilize the closed loop system under uncertainty. An analytical condition governing this transition is derived, its physical mechanism is established, and its dependence on vehicle mass, aerodynamic properties, and geometry is characterized. An Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI)-based control architecture is then developed to inherently address this limitation and is tuned via ℋ_∞ Closed Loop Shaping to provide local robustness and performance guarantees. The internal dynamics introduced by the INDI inversion are analytically derived and proven to be stable throughout the flight envelope. The proposed controller is compared against a robust gain-scheduled baseline controller through linear stability analysis and an extensive nonlinear Monte Carlo campaign. Both controllers achieve 100% success across the considered Monte Carlo campaign, though the INDI-based controller provides improved tracking performance, superior nominal and dispersed stability margins, requires fewer controller design points, and reduces controller tuning complexity.
ER -