Nonlinear Robust Tracking Control of a Quadrotor UAV on SE(3)

TL;DR

This paper develops nonlinear robust tracking controllers for quadrotor UAVs on SE(3), ensuring bounded errors and robustness to uncertainties, with demonstrated complex maneuver simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel nonlinear control framework on SE(3) for quadrotors that guarantees bounded tracking errors despite uncertainties.

Findings

Tracking errors are uniformly ultimately bounded.

The ultimate bound size can be arbitrarily reduced.

Controllers successfully handle complex maneuvers.

Abstract

This paper provides nonlinear tracking control systems for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that are robust to bounded uncertainties. A mathematical model of a quadrotor UAV is defined on the special Euclidean group, and nonlinear output-tracking controllers are developed to follow (1) an attitude command, and (2) a position command for the vehicle center of mass. The controlled system has the desirable properties that the tracking errors are uniformly ultimately bounded, and the size of the ultimate bound can be arbitrarily reduced by control system parameters. Numerical examples illustrating complex maneuvers are provided.