Adaptive Sliding Mode Control for Quadrotor UAVs With Input Saturation

In this article, a novel adaptive sliding mode control strategy is presented for attitude and altitude stabilization of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), where the input saturation is taken into consideration. The nonlinear dynamic model of quadrotor UAV subject to system uncertainty and external disturbance is first derived using the Euler–Lagrange mechanical equation. To ensure system stability, as well as eliminating the negative effects of saturation features, a saturated adaptive sliding mode control law (ASMCSAT) is proposed, which takes advantages of the sliding mode control and the adaptive control. Compared with conventional control strategies, better tracking performance and disturbance and uncertainty rejection can be achieved with the root mean square of the tracking error being reduced by 34.91% in vertical takeoff and 30.11% in trajectory tracking. Simulations and experiments are provided to verify the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed control method.