Trajectory Tracking Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Autonomous Applications

Quadrotors are suitable aerial platform for carrying out agile flight maneuvers. Currently, quadrotors are handled by ignoring different aerodynamic effects such as rotor drag. Rotor drag is the main aerodynamic effect that causes trajectory tracking error in flight during high speed. Therefore, a control model considering the rotor drag effect is proposed in this research paper. Our proposed model exploits the differential flatness property of dynamic quadrotor model to reduce the trajectory tracking error during the flight of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the environment. Further, a geometric controller is used to stabilize the UAV in the midair. A trajectory publisher is also used to provide the stream of feed-forward control terms for the desired trajectory. The performance of proposed control method is checked with the benchmark controller by computing root-mean-square position error. The proposed solution is tested for predefined horizontal Gerono Lemniscate trajectory and circular trajectory. Further, the proposed model is also tested with change in angular velocity values to prove its robustness in the environment.