Robust Adaptive Sliding Mode Control for UAV

Abstract

Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) are indispensable for various applications where human intervention is considered difficult or dangerous. However, UAV suffer from inherent instabilities in the pitch axis due to their small size and the lack of pilot feedback. A pitch axis control system based on adaptive two-phase Sliding Mode Control (SMC) for a UAV is designed and simulation results are presented. The control system is validated by comparing it with a classical PID controller in terms of input tracking and disturbance rejection properties. In both control situations, the SMC shows high performance without chattering or ripples in the response and is superior to the PID controller performance.