Active Disturbance Rejection Attitude Control for Flapping Wing Micro Aerial Vehicle With Nonaffine-in-Control Characteristics

This study presents attitude control research of flapping wing micro aerial vehicles with nonaffine-in-control characteristics via the active disturbance rejection control technique. With consideration of the uncertainties in moment of inertia caused by wings flapping and external disturbances, an extended state observer based on the unit quaternion is first designed to estimate the angular velocity and total uncertainties. The norm constraint on the unit quaternion can be guaranteed theoretically. The requirement of accurate value of moment of inertia is circumvented in the extended state observer. Based on the designed extended state observer, an output feedback controller using dynamic inversion method is presented to resolve the nonaffine-in-control characteristics caused by the uncertainties in moment of inertia. Rigorous closed-loop system stability is proven by employment of Lyapunov functions and the proposed control structure possesses the multi-time-scale property. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to validate the effectiveness and good tracking performance of the proposed control scheme.