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Chapter

Advanced UAVs Nonlinear

Control Systems and Applications
Abdulkader Joukhadar, Mohammad Alchehabi
and Adnan Jejeh

Abstract

Recent development of different control systems for UAVs has caught the
attention of academic and industry, due to the wide range of their applications such
as in surveillance, delivery, work assistant, and photography. In addition, arms,
grippers, or tethers could be installed to UAVs so that they can assist in construc-
ting, transporting, and carrying payloads. In this book chapter, the control laws of
the attitude and position of a quadcopter UAV have been derived basically utilizing
three methods including backstepping, sliding mode control, and feedback lineari-
zation incorporated with LQI optimal controller. The main contribution of this book
chapter would be concluded in the strategy of deriving the control laws of the
translational positions of a quadcopter UAV. The control laws for trajectory
tracking using the proposed strategies have been validated by simulation using
MATLAB®/Simulink and experimental results obtained from a quadcopter test
bench. Simulation results show a comparison between the performances of each of
the proposed techniques depending on the nonlinear model of the quadcopter
system under investigation; the trajectory tracking has been achieved properly for
different types of trajectories, i.e., spiral trajectory, in the presence of unknown
disturbances. Moreover, the practical results coincided with the results of the
simulation results.

Keywords: UAVs, nonlinear control, quadcopter, gesture-based vision control,

spherical blimp UAV

1. Introduction

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research has attracted tremendous attention

during the last decade. This interest is mainly given due to the low cost of this type
of vehicles and its large application range in diverse areas such as surveillance,
delivery, maintenance, inspection, transportation, work assistant, and aerial pho-
tography. For instance, UAVs could be provided with cameras so as to observe
nature and wildlife. In addition, arms, grippers, or tethers might be installed to
UAVs, for which UAVs can assist in construction, transportation, and carrying
payloads. Different types of UAVs are considered as complex systems since their
dynamic models are nonlinear, dynamically coupled, and the difficulty to establish
a very accurate mathematical model. The design of UAV control systems has
attracted many researchers worldwide, and many control techniques have been
proposed for the aim of accomplishing a 6-DoFs dynamic and trajectory tracking

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Unmanned Robotic Systems and Applications

control of UAVs. This chapter focuses on advanced nonlinear control approaches in

order to enhance the dynamic performance of both dynamic and trajectory tracking
control of UAVs. Nonlinear control theories have been developed among other
control strategies due to their capacity to deal with the nonlinearity and the cou-
pling components of the UAV state variables.
Quadcopters are one of the very common UAV platforms; in fact, the literature
related to control design of quadcopters is extensive, and this type of UAVs is
underactuated, nonlinear, and strongly coupled, which is hard to cope properly
with conventional control methods. On the other hand, they have many advantages
over conventional helicopters, which may be concluded as follows: capability of
vertical take-off and landing (VTOL), hovering and maneuverability, and low
power consumption, since it has four small-scale propellers for thrust and
orientation.
In the area of quadcopter literature, there is a variety of applications as aerial
manipulation [1, 2], quadcopter pendulum [3], navigation and localization [4, 5],
obstacle avoidance [6], altitude control [7], and cooperative and formation control
[8, 9]. Moreover, several control schemes have been proposed including adaptive
control [10–13], fuzzy control [14], neural network control [15], linear parameter
varying (LPV) control [16], predictive control [17, 18], nonlinear control methods
[19–23], and sliding mode control [24, 25]. In [4], researchers propose localization,
navigation, and mapping methods based on the characteristic map; feature map is
selected to localize and navigate the UAV under investigation, while drawing up
navigation strategy and avoidance strategy. In [5], PID controllers for the attitude,
altitude, and position of a quadrotor are designed, and an outdoor experiment is
conducted based on GPS to verify the performance, and desired trajectory’s
waypoints are determined using Mission Planar software. The application of ultra-
sonic sensor is used to detect barriers during the flight, so that the position of the
quadrotor is adjusted depending on the signal of the ultrasonic sensor in order to
avoid collision [6]. Cascaded PID controller with the usage of laser range finder
combined with accelerometer in order to determine the height of the vehicle has
been presented in [7]; the proposed system is compared with the performance of
the system using GPS combined with pressure gauge. However, the results of the
proposed system exhibit better performance especially in the range of low altitude.
Centralized formation flight control of a leader/follower structure of three
quadcopters is proposed in [8] using LQR-PI, the trajectory of the leader defines the
desired trajectory for the followers, and a pole placement controller is used for the
leader and LQR-PI controllers for the followers. In case of communication loss
between leader and any of the followers, the other follower quadcopter provides the
leader’s states to the affected follower quadcopter in order to keep the formation
intact. Whereas a multiagent consensus control incorporated with collision avoid-
ance using model predictive control is presented in [9], the term of achieving
formation and the term of repulsive potential are set in the index function to realize
the formation control considering collision avoidance. The experiment is carried out
using three quadrotor UAVs.
By looking to the quadcopter control systems, dynamic inversion and linear
neural-network-based adaptive attitude control of a quadrotor UAV is introduced
in [10]. Based on the time-scale separation principle, an attitude dynamic inverse
controller and a trajectory dynamic inverse controller are deduced, respectively; the
inverse error dynamics is regulated using PD controller, and a sigma-pi neural
network is introduced to eliminate the inverse error adaptively to improve the
robustness of the controller. Authors of [11] propose a compound adaptive
backstepping and sliding mode control subject to unknown external disturbances
and parametric uncertainties. A comparison study for the proposed method with

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Advanced UAVs Nonlinear Control Systems and Applications
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86353

and without adaptive control is investigated. An adaptive controller based on

backstepping technique is employed for the trajectory tracking of quadrotor incor-
porating a fuzzy monitoring strategy to compensate the undesired dynamic error
caused by lumped disturbances and total thrust input saturation [12]. Reference
[13] introduces adaptive sliding mode controller for distributed control systems
with mismatched uncertainty that exists in communication channels. A linear slid-
ing surface is adopted to guarantee asymptotic stability of each subsystem, and an
adaptive scheme that can update the unknown upper bound of uncertainty is
applied. The distributed controller is constructed based on the information from the
adaptive scheme and neighboring subsystems, such that each subsystem can keep
stable and have good performance.
On the other hand, a tracking control system for the quadrotor UAV based on
Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy control has been presented in [14]. At first, T-S fuzzy
error model has been presented as three independent subsystems for altitude, atti-
tude, and position. Then, T-S fuzzy feedback controller design procedure is applied
for altitude, attitude, and position subsystems of the quadcopter. LMI algorithm has
been utilized in order to calculate the controller’s gains. In [15], a sliding mode
underactuated control (SMUC) is designed for the quadrotor UAV model with small
uncertainty. In order to enhance the tracking response of the quadrotor UAV,
recurrent-neural-network-based sliding-mode underactuated control (RNN-
SMUC) with online recurrent neural network modeling and compensation of
dynamical uncertainty is designed, and the RNN performs as an approximator.
Finally, the combination of SMUC and RNN-SMUC with a transition as so-called
hybrid neural-network-based sliding-mode underactuated control (HNN-SMUC) is
developed. This development has the advantages of SMUC and RNN-SMUC; e.g., a
better transient response of SMUC and an improved tracking performance of RNN-
SMUC are accomplished. Furthermore, researchers of [16] compare between LPV
controllers and LTI H∞ controllers with S/KS loop shaping to test the performance
of a quadrotor while tracking fast trajectories and aggressive maneuvers. Reference
[17] combines nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) and PID controller for
better stabilizing of quadrotor UAV under different noises and disturbance condi-
tions; the proposed controller has been applied for the altitude and attitude control
loops, whereas switching model predictive controllers for attitude, altitude, and
translational motion are derived based on piecewise affine linearized dynamic
model in [18], where the effects induced by wind gusts disturbances are considered
as affine outputs. The experimental platform utilizes inertial measurement unit
IMU, sonar and an optic-flow sensor to produce feedback to the system for indoor
applications. Various flight cases including position hold and altitude set-point,
trajectory tracking, hovering, and aggressive attitude control have been performed
in order to justify the efficiency of the proposed control system.
Nonlinear control methods cover the majority of the applied approaches in the
literature. For instance, [19] proposes nonlinear hybrid controller that utilizes the
time response characteristics of the PID and the stability characteristics of the LQR;
differential-flatness-based feedforward control is incorporated with the LQR to
enhance the performance of the position system, whereas PID controllers are
designed to control the attitude of the quadcopter. Authors of [20] utilize LQR, PID,
and feedback linearization in order to design position-tracking model. The LQR
controller is added to the feedback linearization model to optimize the control
algorithm by determining a suitable cost function; the attitude of dynamic control
was modeled so as to maintain desired quadcopter’s position despite the presence of
disturbances. The performance of tracking position is optimized by adding PID loop
control for pitch, roll, and yaw movement, and a comparison between the perfor-
mance of the two nonlinear control techniques, including backstepping and

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Unmanned Robotic Systems and Applications

feedback linearization with LQR, has been performed in [21]. The control laws have
been derived depending on the nonlinear model with no linearization, and experi-
ments for the attitude have been performed. Whereas in [22], the performance of
sliding mode techniques has been verified and sat function has been used in order to
obtain a continuous control law instead of sign function [23]. This shows nonlinear
control laws applied for optimal trajectory tracking depending on minimum snap
theory, and differential flatness method is utilized to derive control laws that link
between the system outputs and its inputs. Reference [24] focuses on sliding mode
control of the quadcopter; the proposed approach consisted of a sliding mode
observer with finite-time process, a hybridization of a PID conventional controller,
and a continuous sliding-mode one. The main aim is to estimate the system’s state
vector based on the measured system’s output states and to identify a certain type of
the inherited system’s disturbances simultaneously. It is also to track a desired time-
varying trajectory in spite of the influence of external disturbances and uncer-
tainties. Finally, fractional order sliding mode control is used to derive the attitude
control laws of a quadcopter, where PD tracking controllers are used to control the
position of the quadcopter in [25].

2. Nonlinear control approaches

Nonlinear control theory is the area of control theory that deals with nonlinear
systems, time variant systems, or both. Different engineering applications motivate
researchers to develop powerful nonlinear control methods, since a majority of
these systems are considered to be nonlinear. The key reason behind the use of
nonlinear control techniques is their capability to deal with the nonlinear charac-
teristics of nonlinear systems such as underactuations, models uncertainty, and
dynamic coupling. This chapter focuses on the following nonlinear control
approaches:

1. Backstepping

2. Sliding mode control

3. Feedback linearization

2.1 Backstepping

It is a widely used nonlinear control technique, due to its significant inherited

characteristics including: being a recursive controller approach, which depends on a
proposed Lyapunov function for deriving the system control law; higher flexibility,
to some extent, in avoiding key nonlinearity cancellation; and verifying the desired
objective of stabilization and tracking [26, 27]. The procedure of deriving control
laws depending on backstepping technique is concluded in, at first, determining the
error function between the desired input and the system actual output, then
outlining a Lyapunov function and determining virtual controls to make the deriv-
ative of the proposed Lyapunov function with a negative definite. Finally, these
steps are repeated until obtaining the control law.
Consider the following system:

x_ 1 ¼ x2
x_ 2 ¼ f ðxÞ þ g ðxÞu (1)
y ¼ x2
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Advanced UAVs Nonlinear Control Systems and Applications
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86353

Let us define the following error function as

e1 ¼ x1d x1 (2)

and Lyapunov function as

1
V ¼ e21 (3)
2

In order to obtain the derivative of the proposed Lyapunov function with a

negative definite,

V_ ¼ ke21 þ e1 ðx1d þ k1 e1 f ðxÞ g ðxÞuÞ (4)

where k is a positive constant, so that the control law will be as follows:

1
u¼ ðx1d þ ke1 f ðxÞÞ (5)
gðxÞ

Note: it is remarkable to mention that the parameters of a system would appear

in the derived control law when using backstepping, so that an integral action is
added to each virtual control during the procedure of deriving the control law,
which is termed integral backstepping, and more details about backstepping
method are described in [27].

2.2 Feedback linearization

Feedback linearization is also one of the major nonlinear design tools. It is used
to cancel the nonlinear terms in a system’s model; this cancellation resulting in a
linear system allows designing and incorporating linear controllers for a nonlinear
system with the feedback linearization laws. To introduce the procedure of this
strategy, we first introduce the notions of full-state linearization, where the state
equation is completely linearized, and input-output linearization, where the
input-output map is linearized, while the state equation may be only partially
linearized [26].
In this chapter, we will pay attention to input-output linearization method. To
obtain the input-output feedback linearization law, we simply repeat the calculation
of the derivative of the system output along the state variables. Let us consider the
system in (1) as,

y ¼ x2 , y_ ¼ x_ 2 (6)

The input-output linearization law would become:

1
u¼ ð f ðxÞ þ υÞ (7)
g ðx Þ

2.3 Sliding mode control

Sliding mode control is considered one of the control tools of the variable
structure systems (VSS), since it produces a discontinuous controller. It has the
advantage of stabilizing and achieving robustness criteria against model uncertainty
and disturbances. Sliding mode control theory depends on a sliding surface s,
where the sliding mode controller constrains a system to it. The motion toward the
sliding surface consists of a reaching phase during which trajectories starting off
5
Unmanned Robotic Systems and Applications

Figure 1.
Illustration of sign function.

the surface s = 0 move toward it and reach it in finite time, followed by a sliding
phase during which the motion is confined to the surface s [26, 28].
Equivalent control law is one of the sliding mode control strategies; it consists of
two terms, the first is produced by equaling the derivative of sliding surface s to 0.
The other term is called reaching law that has some common formulas such as [28]:

Constant rate reaching law, i.e., s_ ¼ K sgn ðsÞ,

and constant plus proportional rate reaching law, i.e., s_ ¼ Qs K sgn ðsÞ.

where Q and K are positive constants and sign(s) is illustrated in Figure 1.

With V ¼ 21 s2 as a Lyapunov function candidate, hence the condition of the
stability is V_ to be negative definite. In order to ensure that error e converges to
zero, the sliding surface might be supposed as a function of the error as follows [26]:

1ð:Þ
s ¼ c0 e þ c1 e_ þ …… þ cd 1 eρ þ eρð:Þ (8)

where ρ is the relative degree.

The procedure for designing a sliding mode controller can be summarized by the
following steps:

1. Designing the sliding surface s

2. Determining the derivative of the sliding surface s_

3. Equaling the derivative of sliding surface with the appropriate reaching law

4.Deriving the control law from the previous step

3. Quadcopter modeling

The dynamic model of the quadcopter is delivered in this section; the details of
the model can be seen in the literature [29–31]. The state variables of the quadcopter
_ ψ_ T where ζ ¼ ½x; y; zŠT is the position


are defined as, X ¼ x; y; z; x;
_ y;
_ z;
_ φ; θ; ψ; φ;
_ θ;
described in the inertial coordinate frame B, V ¼ ½x; _ z_ ŠT is the translational
_ y;

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Advanced UAVs Nonlinear Control Systems and Applications
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86353

velocity, η ¼ ½φ; θ; ψ ŠT are the roll-pitch-yaw angles describing the attitude of the
_ ψ_ T are the Euler angle rates of the quadcopter described


quadcopter, and η_ ¼ φ; _ θ;
in the body-fixed frame A.
where BRA is the transformation matrix

cψcθ sφ:sθ:cψ cφsψ cφ:sθ:cψ þ sφ:sψ

2 3
6 7
B
R A ¼ 6 sψcθ sφ:sθ:sψ þ cφcψ cφ:sθ:sψ sφ:cψ 7 (9)
6 7
4 5
sθ sφcθ cφcθ

The equations of motion can be written as follows (10):

U1
x€ ¼ ðcφsθcψ þ sφsψ Þ
m
U1
y€ ¼ ðcφsθsψ sφsψ Þ
m
U1
z€ ¼ ðcφcθÞ g
m
(10)
Izz Iyy _ J 1
φ€ ¼ θ ψ_ þ r Ωr θ_ þ U2
Ixx Ixx Ixx

Izz Ixx Jr 1
θ€ ¼ φ_ ψ_ Ωr φ_ þ U 3
Iyy Iyy Iyy

Ixx Iyy 1
ψ€ ¼ φ_ θ_ þ U4
Izz Izz

where m is the mass of the quadcopter given in kilograms. With,

U1 ¼ f 1 þ f 2 þ f 3 þ f 4
 
U2 ¼ l f 4 f 2
  (11)
U3 ¼ l f 3 f 1

U4 ¼ T1 T2 þ T3 T4

where f i ¼ bω2i is the thrust force produced by propeller i with thrust coefficient
b in N
s2/m and ωi is the angular speed of motor i.
T i ¼ dω2i is the drag torque produced by propeller i in N
m with corresponding
drag coefficient d in N2s, l is the distance between center of the quadcopter and
center of propeller in m, I is the inertia matrix, and Ixx, Iyy, and Izz are moments of
inertia about x, y, and z axes, respectively, in kg
m2.
where Jr is the moment of inertia of the propeller and Ωr is the sum of the four
motors’ angular speed. Based on the above derivation and discussion,

U1 b b b b ω21
2 3 2 323
6U 7 6 0 bl 0 bl 76 27
6 27 6 76 ω2 7
U¼6 7¼6 (12)
4 U 3 5 4 bl 0 bl 0 54 ω23 5
76 7

U4 d d d d ω24

7
Unmanned Robotic Systems and Applications

4. Quadcopter control

The control scheme of the quadcopter can be represented as in Figure 2, it

consists of two loops: the attitude control loop and the inner loop, which produces
the control commands for the quadcopter to move. Moreover, the position control
loop and the outer loop produce the references for the inner loop.
In this section, the control laws of the quadcopter will be derived using the
aforementioned nonlinear control methods.

4.1 Quadcopter control using integral backstepping

Control laws of the attitude and position of the quadcopter are derived using
integral backstepping approach.

4.1.1 Altitude control

We will start deriving the control law of the attitude by defining the altitude
error and the Lyapunov function as follows:

1
e1 ¼ zd z, V 1 ¼ e21 (13)
2

If the term k1e1 is added and subtracted to the V_ 1 function, where k1 > 0, it yields

V_ 1 ¼ e1 e_ 1 ¼ e1 ðz_ d V z þ k1 e1 k1 e1 Þ (14)

V_ 1 ¼ k1 e21 þ e1 ðz_ d V z þ k1 e1 Þ (15)

The term z_ d vz þ k1 e1 of the Lyapunov function must vanish for a negative

definite derivative, which can be achieved by choosing the virtual control vz
such that
ð
vzd ¼ z_ d þ k1 e1 þ c1 e1 dt (16)

Similar steps are repeated here to derive the control law,

1
e2 ¼ vzd vz , V 2 ¼ e22 (17)
2

Using a similar strategy as for vzd results

Figure 2.
The block diagram of the position control system of the quadcopter.

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Advanced UAVs Nonlinear Control Systems and Applications
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86353
 
cφcθ
V_ 2 ¼ k2 e22 þ e2 v_ zd U 1 þ g þ k2 e2 (18)
m
m
U1 ¼ fz€d þ k1 e_ 1 þ g þ k2 e2 g (19)
cφcθ

4.1.2 Attitude control

The control laws of the attitude of the quadcopter were derived in this section
depending on integral backstepping method as follows:

1
U2 ¼ φ€ þ k3 e_ 3 a1 θ_ ψ_ a2 θΩ _ r þ k4 e4 (20)
b1 d
1 €
U3 ¼ θ d þ k5 e_ 5 a2 θ_ ψ_ þ a4 θΩ
_ r (21)
b2
1
U4 ¼ ψ€ d þ k7 e_ 7 a5 φ_ θ_ (22)
b3

4.1.3 Position control

The Cartesian motion of a quadcopter in the x-y coordinate relies on θ and ϕ

angles with respect to x and y axes, respectively. Hence, θ and ϕ angles have been
considered as the outputs of x and y control laws. In this chapter, exact Euler angles,
but not small Euler angles, have been considered to obtain the position control laws
on x and y axes. However, this is an important criterion for high dynamic perfor-
mance trajectory tracking control. The position control laws are derived from the
quadcopter’s model directly by applying the procedure of the control approaches.
By applying the procedure of integral backstepping on the position equations of the
quadcopter, one can obtain the following control laws:
 o
m n sφ:sψ
θd ¼ arcsin v_ xd U 1 þ k10 e10 (23)
cφ:cθ:U 1 m
 
m cφ:sθ:sψ
φd ¼ arcsin v_ yd U 1 þ k12 e12 (24)
cψ:U 1 m

4.2 Quadcopter control using feedback linearization with LQI

The feedback linearization method is used in order to decouple the state vari-
ables of the quadcopter. This will enable us to derive the LQ-based control laws for
the attitude, altitude, and position of the quadcopter.

4.2.1 Altitude control

The feedback linearization law of the attitude is given as follows:

Y3 ¼ z (25)
cφ:cθ
Y€ 3 ¼ z€ ¼ U1 g (26)
m
m
U1 ¼ ðV 1 þ gÞ (27)
cφ:cθ

9
Unmanned Robotic Systems and Applications

where V1 is a virtual input, which is computed using LQI controller that will be
presented in section 4.2.4.

4.2.2 Attitude control

The feedback linearization laws of the attitude are derived as follows:

Ixx 
U2 ¼ a1 θ_ ψ_ a2 Ωr θ_ þ V 2 (28)
l
Iyy
U 3 ¼ f a3 φ_ ψ_ þ a4 Ωr φ_ þ V 3 g (29)
l
Izz 
U4 ¼ a5 φ_ θ_ þ V 4 (30)
l

The previous control laws linearize the mapping between the derivatives of the
flat outputs Y 4 ¼ φ, Y 5 ¼ θ, Y 6 ¼ ψ, and the virtual controls V2, V3, V4. The latter
are again computed using an LQI optimal controller,
ðIyy Izz Þ
where a1 ¼ Ixx , a2 ¼ IJxxr , a3 ¼ ðIzzIyyIxx Þ, a4 ¼ IJyyr , and a5 ¼ ðIzzIyyIxx Þ.

4.2.3 Position control

Here, ϕ and θ angles are computed by the control laws of x and y motion, as it is
done in the integral backstepping approach. The control laws are obtained as follows:
 o
m n sφ:sψ
θd ¼ arcsin v_ xd U1 þ V 5 (31)
cφ:cθ:U 1 m
 
m cφ:sθ:sψ
φd ¼ arcsin v_ yd U1 þ V 6 (32)
cψ:U 1 m

where V5 and V6 are the proposed linear quadratic integral optimal controller.

4.2.4 Linear quadratic integral optimal control

The goal of the optimal control is to determine the control feedback, for which
the optimal controller minimizes a proposed cost function J to desired minimum
value. The cost function of the linear quadratic regulator is given as follows [32]:
∞
ð
xT Q x þ uT R u dt
 
J¼ (33)
0

where Q and R represent the weighting matrices for the state vector x and
control law vector u, respectively. LQR is conveniently applied to linear control
systems or linearized nonlinear control systems. The state space model of a linear
control system is given as follows:

x_ ¼ Ax þ Bu
(34)
y ¼ Cx þ Du

The control law u, which minimizes the cost function J, can be derived as
follows:

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Advanced UAVs Nonlinear Control Systems and Applications
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86353

u¼ Kx¼ R 1 BT P x (35)

where P is a covariance matrix. It is the solution of the algebraic Riccati Eq. (36),
in which P_ ¼ 0

AT P þ PA PBR 1 BT P þ Q ¼ P_ (36)

LQR controller is capable to provide a high dynamic performance when used with
linear or linearized control systems. However, LQR is not capable to ensure fast track-
ing of time varying command signals [33, 34]. Different types of LQRs are demon-
strated in literatures [32]. Figure 3 shows an LQI regulator, with an integral action.
If the model of the linear system is extended by an error vector z_ such as

z_ ¼ r y¼r ðCx þ DuÞ (37)

where r is a reference signal, which may represent the desired trajectory for
tracking. The extended state space model of the LQI regulator is as follows:
" #
x_ A 0 x B 0 u
¼ þ (38)
z_ C 0 z D I r

Hence, the control law u with an integral action is as follows:

u¼ Kx KI z (39)

4.3 Quadcopter control using sliding mode

In order to obtain the attitude and position control laws of the quadcopter using
sliding mode control, the steps followed are discussed below.

4.3.1 Altitude control

In order to obtain the control laws of the quadcopter using sliding mode control,
at first, the sliding surface should be determined as follows:

s1 ¼ c1 e1 þ e_ 1 (40)

where e1 ¼ zd z, e_ 1 ¼ z_ d _ so that the derivative of the sliding surface

z,
becomes

s_1 ¼ c1 e_ 1 þ e€1 (41)

Figure 3.
LQI optimal controller structure.

11
Unmanned Robotic Systems and Applications

From the equation of motion, the second derivative of the error becomes

cφcθ
e€1 ¼ z€d z€ ¼ z€d U1 þ g (42)
m

By equaling Eq. (41) to zero, we obtain

cφcθ
s_1 ¼ z€d U 1 þ g þ c1 ðz_ d z_ Þ ¼ 0 (43)
m

By using the constant and proportional rate reaching law formula

cφcθ
K 1 s1 Q 1 sgn ðs1 Þ ¼ z€d U 1 þ g þ c1 ðz_ d z_ Þ (44)
m

So that the control law of the altitude will become:

m
U1 ¼ fz€d þ g þ c1 ðz_ d z_ Þ þ K 1 s1 þ Q 1 sgn ðs1 Þg (45)
cφcθ

4.3.2 Attitude control

By following sliding mode control steps of design for the attitude of the
quadcopter, we obtain

1
U2 ¼ φ€ a1 θ_ ψ_ _ r þ c2 ðφ_ d
a2 θΩ φ_ Þ þ K 2 s2 þ Q 2 : sgn ðs2 Þ (46)
b1 d
1 €
a2 θ_ ψ_ þ a4 θΩ
_ r þ c3 θ_ d θ_ þ K 3 s3 þ Q 3 : sgn ðs3 Þ
 
U3 ¼ θd (47)
b2
1
U4 ¼ ψ€ d a5 φ_ θ_ þ c4 ðψ_ d ψ_ Þ þ K 4 s4 þ Q 4 : sgn ðs4 Þ (48)
with b3

s2 ¼ c2 e2 þ e_ 2 s3 ¼ c3 e3 þ e_ 3 s4 ¼ c4 e4 þ e_ 4
e2 ¼ φd φ e3 ¼ θ d θ e4 ¼ ψ d ψ

4.3.3 Position control

Same strategy will be followed to derive the control laws of the position as in
integral backstepping and feedback linearization. The control laws of both x, y will
command the attitude loop with the references to accomplish the desired trajectory
 o
m n sφ:sψ
θd ¼ arcsin x€d U 1 þ K 5 s5 þ Q 5 : sgn ðs5 Þ (49)
cφ:cθ:U 1 m
 
m cφ:sθ:sψ
φd ¼ arcsin y€ U 1 þ K 6 s6 þ Q 6 : sgn ðs6 Þ (50)
cψ:U 1 d m

with

s5 ¼ c5 e5 þ e_ 5 s6 ¼ c6 e6 þ e_ 6
e5 ¼ xd x e 6 ¼ yd y

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86353

4.4 Results

The discussed nonlinear approaches have been tested in MATLAB/Simulink

based on the nonlinear quadcopter model of Eq. (10), as well as experimental
verification is also conducted. For modeling and simulation of the proposed
approaches, the simulation sample time was Ts = 100 μs and the solver used was
Runge-Kutta with a fixed integration. Figures 4 and 5 show the system’s trajectory
tracking response. Figure 4a depicts the system response when implementing the
proposed integral backstepping approach. Figure 4b shows the system response
using feedback linearization with LQI approach. Figure 4c represents the system
response using sliding mode control. Figure 4a–c demonstrates the system trajec-
tory tracking to a desired trajectory command signal, with the existing external
disturbances. These disturbances are being added with the command signals at
different time instances. The initial position of the desired trajectory was (2, 0, 0),
but the quadcopter was initiated with a different initial position as (0, 0, 0). As seen
from Figure 4a–c, for the three investigated control approaches, the actual trajec-
tory at the start was a bit diverged from the desired trajectory. However, the actual
trajectory was then converged to the desired one fast. Figure 5 exhibits the refer-
ence signals and the responses for x-, y-, and z axes of the quadcopter in the 3D
space. These references on x and y axes were selected to be sinusoidal signals with
2 m of magnitude and 0.05 Hz of frequency. The command along z axis was a ramp
signal with 0.2 m.s 1 velocity rate. Figure 6 shows the tracking errors of the

Figure 4.
Desired and actual trajectory, proposed integral backstepping response (4-a), feedback linearization with LQI
response (4-b), and sliding mode control response (4-c).

Figure 5.
Desired and actual trajectory, proposed integral backstepping response (5-a), feedback linearization with LQI
response (5-b), and sliding mode control response (5-c).

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Figure 6.
Trajectory tracking errors, proposed integral backstepping response (6-a), feedback linearization with LQI
response (6-b), and sliding mode control response (6-c).

Figure 7.
Practical UAV control scheme.

Figure 8.
Pitch practical response using integral backstepping.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86353

Figure 9.
Pitch practical response: (a) using integral backstepping and (b) feedback linearization with LQI.

quadcopter motion on x, y and z. However, as seen, the tracking error of the motion
on the three axes converged to zero. But, a little divergence was observed, which
were due to the existence of disturbance with the command signals.
The practical implementation, of the proposed control strategies of the attitude
control of the quadcopter, has been validated using Arduino MEGA board with an
inertial measurement unit (IMU). Figure 7 exhibits the practical UAV control
system. Figure 8 shows the practical implementation results and response of pitch
angle using integral backstepping controller. As noticed earlier, there is a static error
with oscillating response. Figure 9a and b demonstrates the practical result and
response of the roll angle when implementing integral backstepping and feedback
linearization with LQI controllers, respectively.
As noticed from Figure 9a, there was an oscillating response for pitch angle
control during transient state, of almost undesired of 20° of overshoot and
downshoot when implementing the proposed backstepping controller. But, high
dynamic performance and fast tracking control were obtained for pitch angle con-
trol when implementing the proposed LQI controller with feedback linearization
approach as seen in Figure 9b.

5. Conclusion

This chapter has discussed different advanced control techniques for UAV con-
trol. Nonlinear control theories have been reviewed among other control strategies
due to their capacity to deal with the nonlinearity and the coupling components of
the UAV state variables. This includes backstepping, feedback linearization, and
sliding mode control. UAV nonlinear model has been derived and modeled in
MATLAB®, and the proposed control strategies have been implemented. Simulation
results obtained from the developed model with the control strategies were
presented and discussed. Different path tracking and trajectories have been
examined with successful and high dynamic performance. The developed control
strategies have exhibited robustness against the UAV parameter mismatch and
dynamic uncertainties.

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Author details

Abdulkader Joukhadar1*, Mohammad Alchehabi2 and Adnan Jejeh1

1 Department of Mechatronics Engineering, University of Aleppo, Syria

2 Department of Control Engineering and Automation, University of Aleppo, Syria

*Address all correspondence to: ajoukhadar@alepuniv.edu.sy

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86353

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