Design of a Sliding Mode Controller for Quadcopter

Abstract

Nowadays, unmanned aerial vehicles became an important research area. Search and rescue, transportation, fire monitoring, commercial and journalism, military and defence, crop spraying and scientific research are some of the areas which UAVs can be used [1,2]. Because of their agile manoeuvrability, quadcopters are often used for controller designs. In this paper a sliding mode controller is developed for altitude and attitude control, and the obtained simulation results are discussed. After the design is made, coefficients are tuned by iteration method. Also a drawback called chattering effect is explained and reducted to achieve better control. The rest of the paper provides more detailed information about abovementioned topics.