Active disturbance rejection control for a quadrotor: a high-gain observer-based sliding-mode technique

This study is investigates the trajectory tracking control problem of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). To ensure desired trajectory tracking performance despite modeled uncertainty and external gust interference, an active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) strategy is proposed, which separates the UAV control system into two parts. The ADRC strategy is applied in the attitude control (AC) system to address internal system uncertainty and ensure dynamic performance. In the position control (PC) system, sliding-mode control (SMC) with a high-gain observer is introduced to guarantee system robustness against external and internal disturbances. The quadrotor system can converge the tracking error to an arbitrarily small set of residuals by constructing a Lyapunov function. Numerical analysis demonstrates that the proposed control system has good trajectory tracking and anti-disturbance performance for the quadrotor.