Robust State/Output-Feedback Control of Coaxial-Rotor MAVs Based on Adaptive NN Approach

The coaxial-rotor micro-aerial vehicles (CRMAVs) have been proven to be a powerful tool in forming small and agile manned-unmanned hybrid applications. However, the operation of them is usually subject to unpredictable time-varying aerodynamic disturbances and model uncertainties. In this paper, an adaptive robust controller based on a neural network (NN) approach is proposed to reject such perturbations and track both the desired position and orientation trajectories. A complete dynamic model of a CRMAV is first constructed. When all system states are assumed to be available, an NN-based state-feedback controller is proposed through feedback linearization and Lyapunov analysis. Furthermore, to overcome the practical challenge that certain states are not measurable, a high-gain observer is introduced to estimate the unavailable states, and then, an output-feedback controller is developed. Rigorous theoretical analysis verifies the stability of the entire closed-loop system. In addition, extensive simulation studies are conducted to validate the feasibility of the proposed scheme.