Design of autopilot control laws for MAV using super twisting control

Autopilot control law has been designed for Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) using the second order sliding mode (SOSM) approach. The control implementation has an inner loop and an outer loop structure, outer loop converts the guidance commands to desired attitudes. Inner loop attitude tracking control is done using output feedback based higher order sliding mode technique. Finite time convergence properties of second order sliding mode technique has been used for designing tracking controller. Lyapunov based stability proof has been given to analyze the zero dynamics stability of the MAV longitudinal dynamics during tracking. Nonlinear 6DoF model of the Blackkite 300 mm wingspan fixed wing MAV, is used both for control design and as well as to verify controller performance against the classical PID control methods