Model free adaptive control design for a tilt trirotor unmanned aerial vehicle with quaternion feedback: Theory and implementation

Summary This article focuses on the attitude and altitude tracking control of the tilt trirotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which is subject to modeling uncertainties and unknown external disturbances. A novel model free adaptive controller is designed to achieve asymptotic tracking control of the UAV attitude and altitude channels. The control scheme is based on the data driven strategy, and relies on the input/output data to estimate the system dynamics online. Furthermore, the discrete sliding mode algorithm is combined to enhance the system robustness, and the quaternion feedback is employed to avoid the singularity associated with the attitude control design. The stability of closed‐loop system and the convergence of the tracking errors are proved. And real time flight experiments are preformed on a tilt trirotor UAV control testbed. The experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme and achieve a strong robustness with respect to the modeling uncertainties and unknown external disturbances.