Robust Designated-time Tracking Control Strategy for Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Subject to Disturbances and Input Saturation

• Published in: IEEE transactions on aerospace and electronic systems pp. 1 - 12
• Main Authors: Li, Jiao-Jiao, Sun, Zong-Yao, Wang, Zhuo, Chen, Chih-Chiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2025
• Subjects: Autonomous aerial vehicles; Convergence; Disturbance observers; External disturbances; Input saturation; Mathematical models; Motors; Quadrotor UAVs; Quadrotors; Robust designated-time tracking; Steady-state; Training; Transient analysis; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 0018-9251; 1557-9603
• DOI: 10.1109/TAES.2025.3603795

This article aims to address the robust designated-time tracking control problem for quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The difficulty is to maintain the tracking error between the quadrotor's position/attitude and the expected signal within a pre-specified, time-varying restriction during the entire operation process, while compensating multiple external disturbances and dealing with input saturation. Utilizing a set of time-based barrier functions tied to tracking accuracy and convergence time, we develop a continuous bounded controller by combining multiple designated-time disturbance observers with anti-windup compensators. Unlike existing tracking approaches for quadrotor UAVs, our method ensures that the tracking error reaches a predefined compact set within a designated time, while also avoiding excessive overshoot and transient oscillations, and maintaining uniform boundedness of signals in the closed-loop system. Simulations on quadrotor UAVs are performed to validate the efficacy and advantages of the proposed approach.