Adaptive robust attitude control for UAVs – Design and experimental validation

The main contribution of the paper is to propose a scheme of attitude controller for a class of unmanned aerial vehicles based on an adaptive version of the super-twisting algorithm. This controller is based on a very recent second-order sliding mode controller, which is robust in spite of uncertainties and perturbations, ensures finite time convergence, reduces the chattering, increases the accuracy, and does not require time derivative of the sliding variable. A very important feature of the controller is its adaptive gain, which allows to design the controller without knowing bounds of the uncertainties and perturbations. This controller is validated by experimental results. Comparisons versus PID-based controller are made in order to evaluate the robustness of the closed-loop system when similar perturbations are acting. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.