Digital State Feedback Controller and State Observer for Trajectory Tracking of Unmanned Aerial Systems

Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) encompasses Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), also known as Drones, and include related technologies such as ground control stations, data links, and other support equipment. The trajectory tracking control algorithm of hexarotors or hexacopters must be simple enough to incorporate into any high-end processor to control the vehicle with precision and ease. Though ornamented control methods are available in the literature, hardware implementation of the control algorithm requires fixed gains and simple dynamics. A state feedback controller is designed in the digital domain for attitude control to track a pre-defined trajectory, by an unstable hexarotor. To estimate the system states, a full-order observer with faster dynamics is also designed by using the separation principle. The closed-loop combination of the discrete observer, controller, and the hexarotor gives better performance when simulated using MATLAB