Observer-based super twisting design: A comparative study on quadrotor altitude control

• Published in: ISA transactions Vol. 109; pp. 307 - 314
• Main Authors: González, José Angel Cano, Salas-Peña, Oscar, De León-Morales, Jesus
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2021
• Subjects: Altitude control; Quadrotor; Sliding Mode Control; Super twisting; Sliding Mode Control; Super twisting; Altitude control; Quadrotor
• ISSN: 0019-0578; 1879-2022
• DOI: 10.1016/j.isatra.2020.10.026

This paper addresses the design of a continuous super twisting control combined with a high-order sliding mode observer for a class of nonlinear systems. An analysis of closed-loop stability is provided by means of Lyapunov approach, where sufficient conditions are given to ensure the convergence and to select the gains of the proposed controller. Numerical simulation and experimental results illustrate the performance of the proposed control-observer scheme for controlling the altitude of a quad-rotor aircraft. Furthermore, a comparative study against similar approaches from literature is included for illustrating that proposed methodology requires less control effort while shows the best performance. •An observer-based control design based on a Simplified Super Twisting for a class of nonlinear systems is presented.•Reduction on tuning effort by means of a condition on controller and observer gains, which facilitates its implementation.•Sufficient conditions are given to guarantee finite-time stability using Lyapunov approach.•Simulation and experimental results show the performance of proposed observer-control.•Proposed scheme shows the best performance among tested controllers, as control signal is smoother and requires less control effort.