Quadrotor attitude tracking using nonlinear controllers: - robust optimal adaptive controller - geometric adaptive controller

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the design and development of two independent nonlinear control methodsfor attitude tracking of quadrotors UAV. We first introduce the concept of the quadrotor, wherethe nonlinear dynamic model of quadrotor is obtained by using Newton’s equations of motionalong with the set of frames necessary. Then, a detailed study about each controller is presented where the first controller is a robust optimal adaptive which deals with tracking problem inpresence of parametric uncertainties, actuator amplitude constraints, and unknown time-varyingexternal disturbances. This method uses a nonlinear disturbance observer that was integrated with an adaptive control to handle external disturbance and parametric uncertainties respectively. While a PSO algorithm is proposed to tackle input constraints. The second one presents ageometric adaptive control system with state inequality constraints for the attitude dynamics of arigid body which was presented on 𝑆𝑂 ( 3 ) manifolds avoiding undesired regions and deal withexternal disturbances. The control systems are designed such that the desired attitude isstabilized based on Lyapunov theory. Finally, to test and validate the proposed controllers, several simulation using Matlab code are presented with a comparison between the developed controllers in term of their dynamic performance.