Geometric Nonlinear PID Control of a Quadrotor UAV on SE(3)

Nonlinear PID control systems for a quadrotor UAV are proposed to follow an attitude tracking command and a position tracking command. The control systems are developed directly on the special Euclidean group to avoid singularities of minimal attitude representations or ambiguity of quaternions. A new form of integral control terms is proposed to guarantee almost global asymptotic stability when there exist uncertainties in the quadrotor dynamics. A rigorous mathematical proof is given. Numerical example illustrating a complex maneuver, and a preliminary experimental result are provided.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1109.445

Robust Takeoff and Landing for a Class of Aerial Robots

This paper focuses on the problem of robust takeoff and landing for a class of VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aerial robots. One of the main challenge to be addressed derives from the fact that system dynamics may be remarkably different in case contacts with the landing surface happen or not. To this purpose an overall description of the system is obtained by considering the different behaviors and by defining a hybrid automaton. By taking explicitly into account the presence of possible model uncertainties and tracking errors in the definition of the reference trajectories, a control law is proposed which is shown to be able to achieve robustly the desired transitions between the hybrid states of the automaton

Robust Takeoff and Landing for a Class of Aerial Robots

This paper focuses on the problem of robust takeoff and landing for a class of VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aerial robots. One of the main challenge to be addressed derives from the fact that system dynamics may be remarkably different in case contacts with the landing surface happen or not. To this purpose an overall description of the system is obtained by considering the different behaviors and by defining a hybrid automaton. By taking explicitly into account the presence of possible model uncertainties and tracking errors in the definition of the reference trajectories, a control law is proposed which is shown to be able to achieve robustly the desired transitions between the hybrid states of the automaton