Drones, Vol. 7, Pages 130: Design and Implementation of UAV Velocity Controller Based on Reference Model Sliding Mode Control

Drones, Vol. 7, Pages 130: Design and Implementation of UAV Velocity Controller Based on Reference Model Sliding Mode Control

Drones doi: 10.3390/drones7020130

Authors: Qi Wang Wei Wang Satoshi Suzuki Akio Namiki Hongxun Liu Ziran Li

In recent years, multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have been widely applied for various applications; however, they are yet to be as commonly utilized in certain industrial transportation applications. Thus, this work designed and implemented a reference model-based integral sliding mode control (SMC) method applied to the velocity controller of a multi-rotor UAV. The designed controller was compared with an integral SMC scheme, and then the controller and modeling robustness were verified. Finally, the proposed method was applied to an industrial six-rotor UAV. Three experiments involving target-tracking, fixed-point hovering, and robustness verification were executed. A load of approximately 81.5 % of the UAV’s self-weight was used to verify the robustness of the proposed scheme against parameter uncertainty. This work will serve as a meaningful reference for the application of the SMC in practical industrial applications.