Adaptive Nonlinear Tracking Control Algorithm for Quadcopter Applications

This paper presents a nonlinear tracking controller including the cutoff frequency adaptation algorithm for quadcopters without the use of true plant parameters. This study makes two contributions. First, an adaptation algorithm automatically updates the closed-loop cutoff frequency by updating the feedback gains. Second, a nonlinear control law renders the closed-loop system to guarantee the exponential performance recovery and offset-free properties, while only using the proportional component of tracking errors. The numerical verifications are performed to verify the closed-loop performance improvement from the proposed controller with MATLAB/Simulink.