Trajectory Tracking of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles using Backstepping Approach-based Sliding Mode Control

Given their increasing popularity in many applications in society today, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been the subject of a lot of research. This paper provides a Sliding Mode Control (SMC) with the application of the backstepping approach for the purpose of UAVs trajectory tracking. Lyapunov functions are used to develop the backstepping control approach, and sliding surfaces are obtained to establish control laws. Simulation results show the advantage of backstepping-based SMC over PD controller, particularly in terms of settling time and accurate trajectory tracking. Moreover, a varying input load is used as the reference to explore the accuracy of the trajectory tracking and results are quite satisfactory with even helical trajectory.