A nonlinear adaptive control approach for quadrotor UAVs

In this paper, a continuous, time varying adaptive controller is developed for an underactuated quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The vehicle´s dynamic model is subject to uncertainties associated with mass, inertia matrix, and aerodynamic damping coefficients. A Lyapunov based approach is utilized to ensure that position and yaw rotation tracking errors are ultimately driven to a neighborhood about zero that can be made arbitrary small. Simulation results are included to illustrate the performance of the control strategy.