Journal of Applied Sciences ›› 2019, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (1): 137-150.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.0255-8297.2019.01.013

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Nonlinear PI Cascade Attitude Control with Prescribed Performance for a Quadrotor UAV

CHEN Long-sheng, NING Xiao-ming   

  1. School of Aircraft Engineering, Nanchang Hangkong University, Nanchang 330063, China
  • Received:2018-01-22 Revised:2018-05-08 Online:2019-01-31 Published:2019-01-31

Abstract:

In this paper, a prescribed performance nonlinear PI cascade (PPN-CPI) attitude tracking control scheme is proposed for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (QUAV) with unknown external disturbances and unknown nonlinearities based on known initial conditions. By dividing the quadrotor attitude system into two subsystems, i.e., attitude angles and angular velocities, a cascade controller designed with consideration of the system internal causality is adopted to tackle underactuated constraints effectively. Next, a simple nonlinear function is established by using the error transformation theory and Taylor polynomials, and two nonlinear PI controllers are developed to handle the unknown nonlinearities, unknown external disturbances, and the singular value problem for attitude angles and angular velocities subsystems with the feasibility proved by theoretical analysis, respectively. The proposed controller inherits the advantages of traditional PID with better adaptability and robustness, and flexibility in parameter adjustment as well. Simulation studies results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed attitude tracking control scheme.

Key words: prescribed performance, nonlinear PI control, quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle, cascade control

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