Design of feedback linearization control and reconfigurable control allocation with application to a quadrotor UAV

Based on the developed nonlinear dynamic equations of a quadrotor (named as Qball-X4) UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), attitude and trajectory tracking control designs based on an inner/outer loop control structure has been proposed in this paper. Feedback linearization is designed to control the attitude stability in inner loop, traditional PID is designed to follow trajectory in accordance with pre-planned paths based on the Qball-X4 nonlinear model. For taking care of faults occurred in the UAV during the flight, reconfigurable control allocation is implemented together with the above controllers. Performance of constrained optimization algorithm for reconfigurable control allocation design - Fixed-point (Fix) algorithm with applications to Qball-X4 is evaluated under different partial-loss fault cases. Various simulation results have been provided to demonstrate the validity of the fault tolerant control system design and the effectiveness of the reconfigurable control allocation design in trajectory tracking control.