L1 adaptive control for quadcopter: Design and implementation

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have a lot of potentials in outdoor applications. However, uncertainties such as wind disturbances and mass change when performing some particular tasks, greatly affect their tracking performance. This paper presents a methodology using L₁ adaptive control to address some of the robustness issues of the quadcopter in outdoor flight which significantly improves the performance comparing to the baseline controller. Simulation and flight tests verify the potential of the presented controller.