Adaptive Robust Control (ARC) for an altitude control of a quadrotor type UAV carrying an unknown payloads

This research deals with an altitude controller of a quadrotor type UAV with an unknown total mass of the structure. We assume that the uncertainty results from the flight mission in which the UAV carries unknown payloads. Since the quadrotor type UAV involves both translational and rotational motions due to its inherent dynamics, it is of importance to know accurate information on the vehicles the moment of inertia and the total mass in order to guarantee the UAVs attitude and position controls. An Adaptive Robust Control (ARC) is utilized to compensate for the parametric uncertainty. Then, Lyapunov based stability analysis shows that the proposed control design guarantees asymptotic tracking error for the UAVs altitude control. Numerical simulation results which are time-based are presented to illustrate the good tracking performance of the designed control law.