Predictive Control of Quad-Rotor Delivering Unknown Time-Varying Payloads Based upon Extended State Observer

In this paper, robust control problem is addressed for quad-rotor delivering unknown time-varying payloads. Firstly, the model of a quad-rotor carrying payloads is built. Dynamics of the payloads are treated as disturbances and added into the model of the quad-rotor. Secondly, to enhance system robust-ness, the extended state observer (ESO) is applied to estimate the disturbances from the payloads for feedback compensation. Then a type of predictive controller targeting multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system is developed to degrade the influences caused by sudden changes from load-ing/dropping of the payloads. Finally, by making comparison with the con-ventional cascade proportional-integral-derivative (CPID) and the sliding mode control (SMC) approaches, superiority of the scheme developed is va-lidated. The simulation results indicate that the CPID method shows poor performance on attitude stabilization and the SMC shows input chattering phenomenon even it can achieve satisfied control performances.