Trajectory Tracking of a Quadrotor UAV based on High-Order Differential Feedback Control

A high-order differential feedback control (HODFC), which is a model free control strategy, is applied to the trajectory tracking of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with unknown uncertainties in this paper. Two virtual control variables are introduced to decouple the quadrotor flight system. The third-order HOD (high-order differentiator) is proposed and used to estimate the differentials of reference input and the states of system. The second-order HODFC is designed to ensure the closed system has desired poles. A controller filter is used to compensate the unknown function and disturbance in the quadrotor system. A comparison between the HODFC and active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) is conducted. The simulation results illustrate that the HODFC method can ensure that the quadrotor output track the desired trajectory asymptotically with a smaller tracking error than the linear ADRC, even with unknown function and disturbance.