UAV quadrotor attitude control: An ADRC-EMC combined approach

This study presents an original approach to the design of a complete digital attitude control unit for a UAV quadrotor. The approach is developed within the framework of Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) and Embedded Model Control (EMC), two well-established control design methodologies, both based on the estimation of the disturbances/uncertainties affecting the plant to control, and on their online cancellation. The attitude control design carried out in this paper demonstrates the possibility of adopting a simple input–output model to control the UAV attitude, while relying on the disturbance rejector to bridge the gap between model and plant reality. The designed attitude control unit encompasses an attitude state predictor, a control law, and a model-based reference generator. A multi-step test strategy is proposed to assess the performance of this disturbance-rejection-based attitude controller. Consequently, the presented experimental results are obtained both using a high-fidelity numerical simulator and in several experimental tests, carried out either on a laboratory single-axial test-bench or in-flight. Finally, the control unit performance is benchmarked, in simulation, against a state-of-the-art high-performance UAV attitude controller.