Variable-gain sliding mode control for quadrotor vehicles: Lyapunov-based analysis and finite-time stability

Abstract

This work presents a methodology for controlling a quadrotor vehicle in both regulation and trajectory tracking tasks when the system is affected by endogenous and exogenous disturbances. In the proposed approach, the quadrotor is driven by a second-order variable-gain sliding mode controller (VG-SMC), which includes a state-dependent variable-gain that allows enhancing the controller performance against disturbances. Besides, the proposed controller achieves finite-time convergence of the position and orientation error signals and their time derivatives. The performance of the closed-loop system is assessed by comparing it with a standard sliding mode controller whose control objective is to track two optimal smooth reference signals. The comparison between both controllers considers the undisturbed and the perturbed cases. Numerical simulations and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed VG-SMC controller provides better overall closed-loop results than those obtained by a fixed-gain sliding mode controller, despite the presence of disturbances.