Research on Trajectory Tracking Control of Inspection UAV Based on Real-Time Sensor Data

In power inspection, uncertainties, such as wind gusts in the working environment, affect the trajectory of the inspection UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), and a sliding mode adaptive robust control algorithm is proposed in this paper to solve this problem. For the nonlinear and under-driven characteristics of the inspection UAV system, a double closed-loop control system which includes a position loop and attitude loop is designed. Lyapunov stability analysis is used to determine whether the designed system could finally achieve asymptotic stability. Sliding-mode PID control and a backstepping control algorithm are applied to analyze the superiority of the control algorithm proposed in this paper. A PX4 based experimental platform system is built and experimental tests were carried out under outdoor environment. The effectiveness and superiority of the control algorithm are proposed in this paper. The experimental results show that the sliding mode PID control can achieve good accuracy with smaller computing costs. For nonlinear interference, the sliding mode adaptive robust control strategy can achieve higher trajectory tracking accuracy.