High-level underactuated nonlinear control for rotorcraft machines

This paper proposes a high-level underactuated nonlinear controller capable to guide a RUAV during a 3D flight. First, it presents a dynamic model to represent the dynamics of the aircraft, explicitly showing its underactuated character. Following, a suitable controller based on partial feedback linearization is designed for stabilizing the rotorcraft dynamics. A proof of the stability of the closed-loop control system in the sense of Lyapunov, including modeled disturbances and parametric errors, is also presented, as well as experimental results obtained with a quadrotor, which validate the proposed model and controller.