Robust Stabilization of Micro Aerial Vehicles with Uncertain Actuator Nonlinearities

Abstract

Low cost actuators and linkages used in Micro Aerial Vehicles will lead to unmodeled nonlinearities like dead zone and backlash in the actuator. These actuator nonlinearities are often neglected in the design of feedback control system and can detoriate the system performance remarkably. This paper presents the design of robust control laws for Micro Aerial vehicles (MAV) using sliding mode control approach to deal with nonlinear uncertain plant models. The uncertainties can be in the form of parametric variations, external disturbances or uncertain actuator nonlinearities. The uncertainties are assumed to be bounded with known values. Simulation has been carried out using MAV 6 DoF nonlinear model and the results are provided to check the performance of the control laws.