Robust Nonlinear Control for the Fully Actuated Hexa-Rotor: Theory and Experiments

Abstract

This letter addresses a fully-actuated Hexa-rotor’s control under exogenous position and attitude disturbances. For that aim, we propose a nonlinear and robust control based on a backstepping technique for position dynamics and a geometric control for attitude dynamics. We demonstrate that the closed-loop system is globally exponentially stable. To validate the reached stability, we present simulation results using MATLAB/Simulink and software in the loop simulations using the well-known PX4 firmware in a realistic scenario on a virtual environment in Gazebo. Finally, to ultimately demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm, we implement it on an own-developed fully-actuated Hexa-rotor platform. Our contributions can be summarized as 1) the design of a robust controller for the fully-actuated Hexa-rotor not presented in the literature, 2) the publication of the controller’s code for the PX4 autopilot software, and 3) drone’s construction and presentation of real flight experiments.