Adaptive robust control of quadrotor helicopter towards payload transportation applications

Sliding mode control is known as a robust control approach to maintain system performance and keep it insensitive to disturbances. This paper proposes an integral sliding mode based adaptive robust control for a quadrotor helicopter with parametric uncertainties and disturbances. With the help of the synthesized on-line adaptive scheme, the uncertain parameters can be accurately estimated without the knowledge of the uncertainty bounds. In this case, there is no need to increase the discontinuous control gain, which may stimulate control chattering effect, to maintain the robustness of the controller. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is validated through a simulation of the payload transportation application. Compared to the commonly used linear quadratic regulator (LQR) approach, the proposed adaptive robust control strategy can maintain the tracking performance during the whole flight phase.