Sliding Mode Controller Based on the Sliding Mode Observer for a QBall 2+ Quadcopter with Experimental Validation

Abstract

This paper studies a particular Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), called QBall 2+ quadcopter. This vehicle is a complex system, non-linear, strongly coupled, and under-actuated. First, a non-linear model was developed to represent the dynamics of the studied drone. Once the latter is established, the linear model was used to obtain the best gains of the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller. This controller was applied after on the non-linear model of the UAV. Moreover, a Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) based on Sliding Mode Observer (SMO) was designed for retrieving the system unknown variables. Through these latter, the QBall 2+ was controlled, taking into account the observer errors. The first contribution in this work is to implement the PID regulator on the QBall 2+ flight controller to validate the results obtained by simulation. Secondly, due to the limitations of the Flex 3 cameras, especially when the drone is outside their working environment, the sliding mode observer was implemented to replace the cameras in order to measure the states of the system considered in this work. Simulation results of the different applied controllers were displayed to evaluate their effectiveness.