I&I Adaptive Control via Dynamic Surface Control Approach for a Four-Rotor Mini Helicopter

Abstract

This paper presents a simple adaptive controller for a four rotor mini helicopter based on Immersion and Invariance (I&I) approach. The I&I adaptive control theory proposed by Astolfi et.al. has many superior features compared to other conventional certainty-equivalence (CE) adaptive approaches. However, for a class of nonlinear systems which can be described in strict feedback form, the I&I adaptive controller, as well as the back-stepping (BS) controller and the adaptive back-stepping controller, has the problem of “explosion of complexity” caused by the repeated differentiations of virtual controls. That is, the complexity of the controller grows drastically as the order of the system increases. To overcome this problem, a design method of I&I adaptive control via dynamic surface control (DSC) approach is proposed and applied for a path tracking problem of the four rotor mini helicopter in the planer motion. Numerical simulation illustrates the robustness of the proposed controller against uncertain aero-dynamical parameters.