Backstepping sliding mode tracking control of quad‐rotor under input saturation

Abstract

Purpose

The quad‐rotor is an under‐actuation, strong coupled nonlinear system with parameters uncertainty, unmodeled disturbance and drive capability boundedness. The purpose of the paper is to design a flight control system to regulate the aircraft track the desired trajectory and keep the attitude angles stable on account of these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Considering the dynamics of a quad‐rotor, the closed‐loop flight control system is divided into two nested loops: the translational outer‐loop and the attitude inner‐loop. In the outer‐loop, the translational controller, which exports the desired attitude angles to the inner‐loop, is designed based on bounded control technique. In consideration of the influence of uncertain rotational inertia and external disturbance, the backstepping sliding mode approach with adaptive gains is used in the inner‐loop. The switching control strategy based on the sign functions of sliding surface is introduced into the design procedure with respect to the input saturation.

Findings

The validity of the proposed flight control system was verified through numerical simulation and prototype flight experiment in this paper. Furthermore, with relation to the flying, the motor speed is kept in the predetermined scope.

Originality/value

This article introduces a new flight control system designed for a quad‐rotor.

Citation

Gong, X., Bai, Y., Hou, Z., Zhao, C., Tian, Y. and Sun, Q. (2012), "Backstepping sliding mode tracking control of quad‐rotor under input saturation", International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Cybernetics, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 515-532. https://doi.org/10.1108/17563781211282268