Integral backstepping sliding mode control for quadrotor helicopter under external uncertain disturbances

In this paper, a novel nonlinear control strategy along with its simulation for a quadrotor helicopter is proposed. The normal 6-DOF dynamic model of the quadrotor based on the Newton–Euler formula as well as the model with external uncertain disturbances are established. Considering the underactuated and strongly coupled characteristics of quadrotor helicopter, we design a nonlinear control method by using integral backstepping combined with the sliding mode control (integral BS-SMC) to stabilize the quadrotor attitude and to accomplish the task of trajectory tracking. The designed controllers based on the hierarchical control scheme can be divided into rotational controller and translational controller and their stability are validated by the Lyapunov stability theorem. By means of the proposed controllers, the chattering phenomenon and discontinuousness of control inputs faced by traditional sliding mode control (SMC) can be avoided. The feasibility of the control approach presented in this paper is verified by the simulations under different scenarios. The results show that the nonlinear control method not only has a better tracking performance than others but also has a higher robustness when unknown disturbances occur.