Adaptive backstepping tracking control of a 6-DOF unmanned helicopter

This paper presents an adaptive backstepping control design for a class of unmanned helicopters with parametric uncertainties. The control objective is to let the helicopter track some pre-defined position and yaw trajectories. In order to facilitate the control design, we divide the helicopter's dynamic model into three subsystems. The proposed controller combines the backstepping method with online parameter update laws to achieve the control objective. The global asymptotical stability (GAS) of the closed-loop system is proved by a Lyapunov based stability analysis. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the controller can achieve good tracking performance in the presence of parametric uncertainties.