Complementary Adaptive Incremental Nonlinear Control for Quadrotors With Payload and Blade Damage Compensation

In this article, an adaptive incremental control scheme is designed for underactuated quadrotors to counteract payload variations, blade damage, and external disturbances. For handling the negative effects of platform uncertainties and blade damage, the adaptive control allocation is proposed. The closed-loop reference model is employed to achieve rapid convergence. To deal with nonlinearities, disturbances, and coupling, a hierarchical geometric incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) controller is established. The proposed method combines the advantages of adaptive techniques and INDI, which can effectively achieve the desired control performance and suppress uncertainties and disturbances. Subsequently, the convergence of the overall closed-loop hierarchical control system has been rigorously analyzed. Comparative flight experiments are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive incremental nonlinear control scheme. Based on the result, the proposed controller can effectively handle the parameter uncertainties, blade damage, and external disturbances, even during an aggressive flight with up to 90° roll angle.