Fast and saturating attitude control for a quadrotor helicopter

In this paper a continuous, nonlinear state feedback attitude controller for a quadrotor helicopter is presented. The design is based on an energy shaping approach and prioritizes the alignment of the thrust direction due to its prominent role for the translational dynamics. Since the controller tends to saturate the control torques, it achieves short settling times. Almost global asymptotic stability of the desired attitude is proven for arbitrary unknown moment of inertia matrices and the performance of the closed loop system is analyzed by simulations.