Robust Kinematic Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Non-holonomic Constraints

Abstract

This paper presents a robust kinematic control of unmanned UAV aerial vehicles with non-holonomic constraints. The studied system consists of a 2D UAV non-holonomic kinematic model represented as a driftless system with its state and control inputs. The first part of this study consists of the evidence that the model being studied is non-holonomic in view of its involutivity properties. The second part of this study consists of the design of a robust kinematic controller for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in which the states of the systems are used for feedback control and the desired angular and linear velocities are precisely tracked by the proposed controller approach. This control strategy is achieved by designing the appropriate Lyapunov functional to meet the robust stability conditions and by finding the switching gains to track the desired profile. The control strategy obtained is tested in the proposed 2D mathematical model of the unmanned aerial vehicle and it is confirmed that the system variables track the desired profile while keeping the angular and linear velocity bounded. This study concludes with a discussion of the results and the respective conclusions.