An improved adaptive fractional-order fast integral terminal sliding mode control for distributed quadrotor

This paper presents a novel control approach for a quadrotor unnamed aerial vehicle (QUAV) in the presence of external disturbances. The QUAV system is difficult to control due to the coupling between its attitude and position, and its dynamics subjected to external disturbances. Therefore, an improved fractional-order fast integral terminal sliding mode control (IFOFITSMC) technique is proposed for the attitude/position of the QUAV in this work. The IFOFITSMC improves the robustness of the QUAV system against time-varying disturbances. The adopted fractional-order fast integral sliding mode surface ensures the finite time convergence and the dynamics of attitude and position follow the desired dynamics more quickly. Moreover, the disturbances that affect the QUAV position and attitude are tackled based on adaptive laws without requiring information about the upper bounds of its disturbances. Furthermore, the Lyapunov method is used to prove the stability and the superior tracking error performances of the QUAV in the presence of disturbances. Finally, numerical simulation is presented to show the efficacy of the IFOFITSMC proposed in this work. Also, some previous methods in the literature are used to compare the tracking performances of the proposed technique. (C) 2021 International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (IMACS). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper presents an improved fractional-order fast integral terminal sliding mode control technique to enhance the robustness of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle system against time-varying disturbances. The adopted fractional-order fast integral sliding mode surface ensures finite time convergence, improving the accuracy of attitude and position dynamics.