Trajectory Linearization Control for a quadrotor helicopter

Abstract

The trajectory tracking problem of a quadrotor helicopters is investigated with Trajectory Linearization Control (TLC) method in this paper. Due to symmetrical structure of the quadrotor helicopters, gyroscopic effects can be neglected in its dynamical model and the model can be divided to four subsystems: position kinematics, position dynamics, attitude kinematics and attitude dynamics. TLC method is applied to design the controller for each of these subsystems such that the difficulty of finding an inverse system for complex quadrotor dynamical model can be avoided. In simulation study, the gyroscopic effects are included in quadrotor model to verify robustness of the proposed controller. Simulation results demonstrate effectiveness of the trajectory tracking controller designed based on TLC method.