Nonlinear control design for a quad rotor unmanned aerial vehicle

In this paper, two control strategies based on sliding mode control or feedback linearization for a quad rotor unmanned aerial vehicle are introduced. Each strategy contains control design with and without disturbances. The sliding mode control law makes it possible to control all the six dimension of freedoms of the vehicle under certain conditions. Besides, a saturation function is used to replace the signum function in order to reduce the chattering phenomenon. Simulations based on these two strategies are carried out. From the aspect of maneuverability, feedback linearization has advantage in control parameter selection and sliding mode control has advantage in robustness dealing with disturbances.