Modeling and Adaptive Flight Control for Quadrotor Trajectory Tracking

International audienceIn the near future, unmanned aerial vehicles are probably going to be included in the airspace. Therefore, air traffic management needs to be enhanced in terms of reliability, safety, and accuracy. The main objective of this paper deals with a quadrotor flight control system that generates the necessary control laws to perform accurately, as well as possible, the reference flight trajectories. In this paper, a new quadrotor flight dynamics is developed, including an adopted wind model component where a study of the minimum phase and observability conditions is performed. Based on an adaptive backstepping control algorithm, a developed flight control system generates nonlinear control laws in an iterative and systematic procedure design. In addition to some simulations in a no-wind situation, the proposed adaptive flight control system is simulated in a windy flight condition. The design of adaptation laws according to some quadrotor parameters is developed, and the global stability of the proposed flight control system is guaranteed using the Lyapunov theory. Numerical simulations are performed for the quadrotor engaged in complex trajectory tracking, and obtained results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control approach