Nonlinear Flight Control Design for Maneuvering Flight of Quadrotors in High Speed and Large Acceleration

The nonlinear flight control design with the hierarchical dynamic inversion (HDI) and recursive control (RC) approaches is presented based on the comprehensive model of a quadrotor to implement the maneuvering flight in high speed and large acceleration. The flight control design comprises the kinematical control, command generation and dynamic control design. The command generation is to convert the required acceleration from the kinematical control into the flight commands of the roll, pitch angles and the heave load acceleration that the dynamic control laws can easily track. The designed nonlinear flight control laws are verified in simulation based on the comprehensive model of the quadrotor. The simulation results demonstrate that the resulting closed-loop system can successfully implement the maneuvering flight in high speed and large acceleration as well as its robustness against the model uncertainties is well. The introduction of the derivative commands of the roll and pitch angles yields a novel flight mode in which the quadrotor head points to a designated direction while the quadrotor conducts the maneuvering flight.