Adaptive integral backstepping control of a reconfigurable quadrotor with variable parameters’ estimation

Abstract

This work presents the control of a quadrotor capable of changing its configuration while flying. The designed controller should handle several arising issues since the drone geometric parameters are varying over time. This variation has a great influence on the quadrotor control, which prompts us to propose an efficient nonlinear adaptive integral backstepping controller. The control architecture includes an estimator of the inertia and other specific blocks to calculate the center of gravity and the mixing matrix. The performance of the proposed control approach has been compared with the conventional integral backstepping controller in two cases, with and without disturbances. The obtained results of the inertias and the center of gravity are also compared and confirmed with those calculated using Computer-Assisted Design–based model.