Trajectory tracking of a quadrotor helicopter based on ℒ1 adaptive control

This paper presents an ℒ
₁
adaptive controller to achieve the trajectory tracking for a quadrotor helicopter. The designed controller is based on nonlinear feed-forward compensations and uses a typical nonlinear quadrotor model considering uncertain inertial parameters and external disturbances. The ℒ
₁
adaptive control design is slightly modified to comply with the position error dynamic and the attitude dynamic. The proposed ℒ
₁
adaptive controller yields uniformly verifiable bounds on the transient and steady state tracking error for any designated bounded reference trajectory. In the presence of a fast adaptation, the adaptive controller with low-pass filters compensates for uncertainties and bounded disturbances in a particular frequency range. Finally, simulation results are included to validate the effectiveness of this control design.