ESO-based Trajectory Tracking Control for Quadrotor UAV with Prescribed Performance

The trajectory tracking control of the quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (QUAV) is investigated. The aim of this paper is to develop a novel trajectory tracking control method considering model uncertainties and external disturbances with finite-time stability and prescribed performance of the attitude. Firstly, the trajectory tracking control system of the QUAV is decoupled into two subsystems, i.e., position and attitude subsystems, wherein, backstepping technique is used to design the position tracking controller. Then, to guarantee the tracking performance of the attitude subsystem, a finite-time convergent performance function is developed, and a prescribed performance attitude controller is devised via using integral barrier Lyapunov function thereafter. In the design process of the above two controllers, ESO is used to estimate and compensate multiple uncertainties and disturbances simultaneously. Moreover, the fractional state feedback and discontinuous phenomenon of the control law are directly avoided to achieve the finite-time convergence rate. Finally, an illustrative example is organized to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.