Information fusion estimation-based path following control of quadrotor UAVs subjected to Gaussian random disturbance

Abstract

Random disturbance has a detrimental effect on the reliability and safety of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This paper proposes an anti-Gaussian random disturbance control method for the path following of a quadrotor UAV. The quadrotor system is linearized and divided into two subsystems, i.e., a translational subsystem and a rotational subsystem, and hierarchical strategy is used to design the overall control architecture. In order to suppress the negative effects of Gaussian random disturbances and simplify the design process of linear-quadratic optimal output tracking control problem, a new information fusion estimation based robust control named Gaussian information fusion control (GIFC) scheme is proposed. The convergence of the output tracking errors of GIFC system is proved via Lyapunov theory. The proposed GIFC control scheme is employed for position and attitude controller designs to enhance the robustness of the quadrotor system to Gaussian random perturbations. Finally numerical simulation experiments illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control strategy.

Keywords: Gaussian random disturbance; Information fusion; Optimal control; Path following; Quadrotor UAVs.