Mu-based trajectory tracking control for a quad-rotor UAV

In this paper, the design and application of a robust mu-synthesis-based controller for quad-rotor trajectory tracking arepresented. The proposed design approach guarantees robust performance over a weakly nonlinear range of operation ofthe quad-rotor, which is a practical range that suits various applications. The controller considers different structured andunstructured uncertainties, such as unmodeled dynamics and perturbation in the parameters. The controller also providesrobustness against external disturbances such as wind gusts and wind turbulence. The proposed controller is fixed and linear;therefore, it has a very low computational cost. Moreover, the controller meets all design specifications without tuning. Tovalidate this control strategy, the proposed approach is compared to a linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller using a high-fidelity quad-rotor simulation environment. In addition, the experimental results presented show the validity of the proposedcontrol strategy.