Unmanned Rotorcraft Tight Formation Flight Control Using Sliding Mode Control Driven by Sliding Mode Disturbance Observers

摘要

An autopilot design for autonomous closed-formation flight of three unmanned rotorcrafts is considered and addressed via Higher Order Sliding Mode Control (НОSM) and sliding mode control driven by sliding mode disturbance observers (SMC/SMDO). The research is based on previously developed and tested HOSM-based formation strategies adapted to the tight formation flight of X4-Flyers unmanned rotorcrafts. The proposed multi-time scale, nested SMC/SMDO-formation flight controller provides the unmanned rotorcrafts with bounded, continuous output tracking suitable for tight formation flight. The performance of the proposed controller is achieved via SMC/SMDO techniques which include translation tracking controller, attitude tracking controller and speed controller for the four propellers.