Adaptive and robust control of quadrotor aircrafts with input saturation

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel adaptive robust controller for the position and attitude tracking of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles subjected to additive disturbances and parameter uncertainties. The nonlinear dynamic equations of the quadrotor are obtained by using the Newton–Euler formalism. An emendatory tracking error is introduced to the modified controller to prevent the system and adaption law from degradation or even instability due to control input saturation caused by actuator constraints. The stability of the closed-loop aircraft system under the proposed control law is guaranteed via Lyapunov theory despite the sustained disturbances and actuator saturation. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method, and the robustness against unknown nonlinear dynamics caused by parametric uncertainties.