Quadrotor Stabilization and Tracking Using Nonlinear Surface Sliding Mode Control and Observer

We propose a control method wherein the estimated angles converge to the desired value for quadrotor attitude stabilization and position tracking. To improve the performance of a quadrotor system, the unmeasured states of the quadrotor are estimated using a sliding mode observer (SMO). We set up a quadrotor dynamic model and augment the quadrotor dynamics by an SMO. We also derive the control inputs by sliding mode control (SMC) and calculate the desired angle of the quadrotor to reach the target position with the control inputs. For fast convergence speed and increased robustness of tracking performance, a nonlinear sliding surface is applied to SMC. The angle of the quadrotor converges to the desired value through the operation of SMC with a nonlinear sliding surface. The target tracking performance is improved by adaptively switching the deceleration curve of the sliding mode surface with a nonlinear curve. Using a tracking system based on a nonlinear surface sliding mode control (NSMC) and SMO, the quadrotor reaches the target position with a decreased settling time. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed system are proved through simulation results.