Disturbance observer based hierarchical control of coaxial-rotor UAV

This paper propose an hierarchical controller based on a new disturbance observer with finite time convergence (FTDO) to solve the path tracking of a small coaxial-rotor-typs Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) despite of unknown aerodynamic efforts. The hierarchical control technique is used to separate the flight control problem into an inner loop that controls attitude and an outer loop that controls the thrust force acting on the vehicle. The new disturbance observer with finite time convergence is intergated to online estimate the unknown uncertainties and disturbances and to actively compensate them in finite time.The analysis further extends to the design of a control law that takes the disturbance estimation procedure into account. Numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed control strategy. (C) 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.