A hybrid robust adaptive control for a quadrotor UAV via mass observer and robust controller

Abstract

The flight stability and safety of the quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with variable mass are the key problems that limit its application. In order to improve the stability and steady-state control precision of the quadrotor system against slow-varying mass and external disturbance, a new robust adaptive flight control algorithm is developed and analyzed in detail in this paper. Firstly, a mass observer based on adaptive control theory is designed to estimate the real-time mass and correct the mass parameter of the UAV. Then, a hyperbolic tangent function and a proportional integral (PI) controller is added into the attitude controller to eliminate the effect of the external disturbances. Finally, a hybrid robust adaptive controller (HRAC) developed with backstepping control method is used here for the trajectory tracking of quadrotor. The boundedness of the nonlinear system is verified by Lyapunov stability theory and uniformly ultimately bounded theorem. The trajectory tracking simulation experiments are presented in MATLAB/SIMULINK simulation environment. According to the simulation results, the real-time mass of quadrotor can be estimated by HRAC satisfactorily under the condition of external disturbances, while the estimate error of mass is only 6.4% of its own. In addition, HRAC can provide a higher trajectory tracking accuracy compared with robust optimal backstepping control (ROBC) and robust generalized dynamic inversion (RGDI). The results suggest a promising route based on the mass observer and hybrid robust controller toward slow-varying mass and the external disturbance as effective robustness control strategy for quadrotor UAV.