The principal objective of this thesis is to enhance the safety of flight for small UAVs in presence of atmospheric perturbation. The approach suggested here consists in coupling a bounded–error estimation method with a new guidance strategy. The bounded error estimation has been used to estimate the states of the dynamical systems corrupted by perturbations and measurement noises, assumed to remain bounded. The method has been first used to detect the occurrence of a wind gust and afterwards to characterize the amplitude and direction of the wind acting on the vehicle Experiments in the B20 gust generator are also presented to validate these approaches and evaluate their performance. The developed guidance strategy provides the vehicle with a direction that takes into account the atmospheric perturbation and the next waypoint position. The guidance law is designed by using proportional navigation guidance that has been adapted to take the perturbations into account. The results presented in this thesis show that it is possible to improve the flight safety in a perturbed environement using the combination of the two methods.
