Trajectory Tracking Control of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Using Fractional Order Sliding-Mode Control

The UAVs have a nonlinear structure and a high performance controller design is required to control such systems. Robust controllers are needed when considering system dynamics and structural and non-structural constraints for four-rotor quadrotor control. For this purpose, the design of the Fractional Order Sliding Mode Controller (FOSMC) has been considered. The nonlinear system is considered as two linear subsystems connected in cascade as inner loop (position control) and outer loop (position control). A virtual control term is used to connect the system to the cascade structure. A well-tuned PI controller was applied to the UAV for the same trajectorys to compare the performance of the designed FOSMC. The simulation results show that the FOSMC is performing satisfactorily in terms of error elimination when compared to the PI controller