A trajectory tracking and 3D positioning controller for the AR.Drone quadrotor

In this paper a complete framework is proposed, to deal with trajectory tracking and positioning with an AR.Drone Parrot quadrotor flying in indoor environments. The system runs in a centralized way, in a computer installed in a ground station, and is based on two main structures, namely a Kalman Filter (KF) to track the 3D position of the vehicle and a nonlinear controller to guide it in the accomplishment of its flight missions. The KF is designed aiming at estimating the states of the vehicle, fusing inertial and visual data. The nonlinear controller is designed with basis on a dynamic model of the AR.Drone, with the closed-loop stability proven using the theory of Lyapunov. Finally, experimental results are presented, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.