Control of a Quadrotor Vehicle Using Sliding Mode Disturbance Observer

This paper uses the recently developed sliding mode control driven by sliding mode disturbance observer approach to design a robust flight controller for a small quadrotor vehicle. This technique allows for continuous control robust to external disturbance and model uncertainties to be computed without the use of high control gain or extensive computational power. The multiple-loop, multiple time-scale flight controller is designed to provide robust position and attitude control of the vehicle while relying only on knowledge of the limits of the disturbances. Extensive simulations of a 6 DOF computer model demonstrate the robustness of the control when faced with external disturbances (including wind, collision and actuator failure) as well as model uncertainties.