Output feedback adaptive super twisting sliding mode control for quadrotor UAVs

In this paper, a sliding mode control with adaptive gain combined with a high-order sliding mode observer to solve the tracking problem for a quadrotor UAV is addressed, in presence of bounded external disturbances and parametric uncertainties. The high order sliding mode observer is designed for estimating the linear and angular speed in order to implement the proposed scheme. Furthermore, a Lyapunov function is introduced to design the controller with the adaptation law, whereas an analysis of finite time convergence towards to zero is provided, where sufficient conditions are obtained. Regarding previous works from literature, one important advantage of proposed strategy is that the gains of control are parameterized in terms of only one adaptive parameter, which reduces the control effort by avoiding gain overestimation. Numerical simulations for tracking control of the quadrotor are given to show the performance of proposed adaptive control–observer scheme.