Output feedback observer-based dynamic surface controller for quadrotor UAV using quaternion representation

Abstract

An output feedback observer-based dynamic surface controller is presented for attitude tracking problem of the quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle, which is subject to measurement noise and external disturbances. The dynamics model of the quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle is firstly introduced with the quaternion representation. Subsequently, a nonlinear augmented observer is introduced for simultaneously estimating the unavailable states and uncertain disturbances from the measurement of system output. The output feedback controller based on the nonlinear augmented observer is designed with the dynamic surface control technique. The Lyapunov stability analysis shows that the attitude tracking performance is ensured and all signals of the closed-loop system remain bounded. Finally, simulative and experimental results are carried out to illustrate, compared with other observer-based controller, the effectiveness of the proposed method is better.