Sliding Mode Control of Tethered Drone: Take-off and Landing under Turbulent Wind conditions

Tethered flight is a highly nonlinear and uncertain process that requires robust control approaches to master its operation. However, there have been only a few researches on the control of the take-off and landing phases of these systems. This paper proposes a sliding mode controller, for tethered drones, to track a desired flight trajectory. Additionally, a three-dimensional Extended Kalman filter is integrated into the control strategy to estimate and compensate for aerodynamic disturbances. Controller performance is evaluated against wind turbulence conditions and modeling uncertainties. The results are compared with those of a non-linear feedback linearization controller.