Title: Adaptive sliding mode control law based on super twisting algorithm for trajectory tracking of quadrotors

Authors: Biswapratim Roy; Mehul Menon; Aritro Dey; Jayati Dey

Addresses: Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Durgapur, 713209, India ' Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Durgapur, 713209, India ' Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Durgapur, 713209, India ' Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Durgapur, 713209, India

Abstract: This paper presents a robust control law design for trajectory tracking of quadrotors based on an adaptive super-twisting sliding mode control (A-STA-SMC). The dynamics of the quadrotors gets affected by significant nonlinearities and actuator saturation. Moreover, external disturbances and unknown parameter variation makes the tracking problem more challenging. The authors address this problem and design the proposed A-STA-SMC for satisfactory tracking performance of the quadrotors. The proposed A-STA-SMC is developed with a proportional-derivative (PD) structured sliding surface followed by super twisting reaching law. The gain of the super twisting algorithm is tuned adaptively that helps to eliminate chattering and demands lower control effort. The asymptotic stability of the proposed design is theoretically validated in Lyapunov's sense. Simulation results demonstrates superior trajectory tracking, stability and control effort compared to the conventional sliding mode control (SMC).

Keywords: adaptation; chattering; control effort; quadrotor; robustness; sliding surface; super twisting; tracking problem.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAAC.2025.148240

International Journal of Automation and Control, 2025 Vol.19 No.5, pp.547 - 567

Received: 26 Jun 2024
Accepted: 19 Aug 2024
Published online: 01 Sep 2025 *

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