Geometric Adaptive Tracking Control of a Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on SE(3) for Agile Maneuvers

This paper presents nonlinear tracking control systems for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) under the influence of uncertainties. Assuming that there exist unstructured disturbances in the translational dynamics and the attitude dynamics, a geometric nonlinear adaptive controller is developed directly on the special Euclidean group. In particular, a new form of an adaptive control term is proposed to guarantee stability while compensating the effects of uncertainties in quadrotor dynamics. A rigorous mathematical stability proof is given. The desirable features are illustrated by numerical example and experimental results of aggressive maneuvers.