Nonlinear adaptive sliding mode control with application to quadcopters

Abstract Nonlinear adaptive sliding mode control (NASMC) has the capability to adequately control a system whose parameters are unknown to the controller designer. Conventional model-based controllers require a mathematical dynamic model of the system with known parameters. These system parameters are normally determined by extensive system identification experiments, which are expensive and time-consuming to perform. A NASMC approach that does not require known system parameters is proposed. Using NASMC, a controller designer can skip the expensive and time-consuming system parameter identification and fast-forward to the control implementation. In addition, once a controller is derived for a quadcopter using NASMC, the same controller will work on any quadcopter with the same equations of motion but different dynamic parameters. The formulation of the NASMC is presented for general second-order and fourth-order systems. Then, as an implementation example, the application of the general NASMC approach is demonstrated by applying it to a quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicle in simulation.