A fractional-order sliding mode controller design for trajectory tracking control of an unmanned aerial vehicle

In this paper, a fractional-order sliding mode controller (FOSMC) is designed and applied to a four-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle (Quadrotor) to perform trajectory tracking for different time-varying references. Because quadrotor's nonlinear system dynamics are effected by external disturbances and parameter variations easily, the FOSMC is used as a nonlinear controller to combine the flexibility of the fractional-order approach and the disturbance rejection characteristics of the integer-order sliding mode controller (IOSMC) to keep quadrotor on desired trajectory, as well as overcome parameter variations. In order to indicate the priority of the FOSMC, the IOSMC is also applied to quadrotor for the same references. The experimental results show that FOSMC is better than IOSMC in terms of error elimination and is good at dealing with parameter variations occurred while tracking the desired trajectory. © 2020 Kauno Technologijos Universitetas. All rights reserved.