Model predictive control using LPV approach for trajectory tracking of quadrotor UAV with external disturbances

Purpose The rotorcraft technology is very interesting area since last few decades due to variety of applications. One of the rotorcrafts is the quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (QUAV), which contains four rotors mounted on an airframe with an onboard controller. The QUAV is a highly nonlinear system and underactuated. Its controller design is very challenging task, and the need of controller is to make it autonomous based on mission planning. The purpose of this study is to design a controller for quadrotor UAV for attitude stabilization and trajectory tracking problem in presence of external environmental disturbances such as wind gust. Design/methodology/approach To address this problem, the model predictive control has been designed for attitude control and feedback linearization control for the position control using the linear parameter varying (LPV) approach. The trajectory tracking problem has been addressed using the circular trajectory and helical trajectory. Findings The simulation results show the efficient performance with good trajectory tracking even in presence of external disturbances in both the scenarios considered, one for circular trajectory tracking and other for helical trajectory tracking. Originality/value The novelty of the work came from using the LPV approach in controller design, which increases the robustness of the controller in presence of external disturbances.