Nonlinear robust attitude control development for a hexarotor unmanned aerial vehicle

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel nonlinear robust controller for a hexarotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The aircraft's attitude dynamic model is subject to system parametric uncertainties and unknown time-varying external disturbances. By utilizing the Lyapunov based stability theorem, the closed-loop attitude system is proved to be exponentially stable in tracking time-varying reference trajectories. Detailed numerical simulation results are provided to validate the control performance and effectiveness of the control strategy.