Modern Flight Controls for UAVs @MATLAB
Modern Flight Controls for UAVs  @MATLAB
Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
When designing flight controls, a good model of your aircraft and its operational environment are needed. Where models are available, traditional methods like PID provide good performance. However, PIDs have a limited operating window which can make them insufficient in uncertain and highly nonlinear environments.

This webinar will introduce flight platform modeling in Simulink, automated flight controller tuning options, virtual testing, and modern control approaches that enable better performance where uncertainty arises through disturbance compensation and reference behavior tracking.

Highlights
With a VTOL example, we will demonstrate:
- Modeling unique flight platforms for use in simulation and virtual testing
- Reducing the time required to tune controllers
- Testing control algorithms in different scenarios
- Ensuring performance in uncertain environmental conditions

About the Presenter
Eric Hillsberg is a Product Marketing Manager for Aerospace Products at MathWorks. He recently graduated from University of Michigan with a degree in Aerospace Engineering and a minor in Computer Science. During school, he interned with NASA Ames Research Center to investigate how Inter-Satellite Links and Distributed Extended Kalman Filters could be used to create a Lunar Position, Navigation, and Timing system. While at MathWorks, he has enjoyed creating videos, demos, whitepapers, and more to communicate key technical concepts to Aerospace customers.

Learn more:
- Try out the model used in the webinar: bit.ly/4nZu0ea

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
05:08 Plant Modeling in Simulink
12:48 Control System Architecture and Tuning
21:45 Disturbance Modeling
27:05 Advanced Control Techniques
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Modern Flight Controls for UAVs

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