Dynamic Modeling and Trajectory Tracking of a Quadcopter via Linear and Backstepping Controller

Abstract

In this study, a navigation problem for a class of quadrotor system is considered. Decentralized control scheme is designed to navigate the system in the route that is given. Exploiting the dynamics of the plant the general control problem is decomposed into 3 different control design problems. The cascaded system is constructed as a result of this control scheme. Conventional linear controllers are designed for the regulation of the inner loops. For the outer loop, a backstepping controller is designed due to the nonlinearity of the dynamics. Outer loop controller produces reference signals for the middle loop meanwhile the inner loop is designed such that the disturbance effect of the thrust signal which is generated by the outer loop controller is mitigated. The designed control scheme is tested in 3 different flight scenarios using the MATLAB numerical simulation environment. Level flight, constant climb and Spiral trajectory mode of operations have been tested under the specified parametric uncertainties.