A Novel Family of Exact Nonlinear Cascade Control Design Solutions for a Class of UAV Systems

Abstract

In this work, a novel family of exact nonlinear control laws is developed for trajectory tracking of unmanned aerial vehicles. The proposed methodology exploits the cascade structure of the dynamic equations of most of these systems. In a first step, the vehicle position in Cartesian coordinates is controlled by means of fictitious inputs corresponding to the angular coordinates, which are fixed to a combination of computed torque and proportional-derivative elements. In a second step, the angular coordinates are controlled as to drive them to the desired fictitious inputs necessary for the first part, resulting in a double-integrator 3-input cascade control scheme. The proposal is put at test in two examples: 4-rotor and 8-rotor aircrafts. Numerical simulations of both plants illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, while real-time results of the first one confirm its applicability.