drones

Article
Sliding-Mode Control for Flight Stability of Quadrotor Drone
Using Adaptive Super-Twisting Reaching Law
Hyeongki Ahn 1 , Mingyuan Hu 2 , Yoonuh Chung 1 and Kwanho You 1,2, *

1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University,

Suwon 16419, Republic of Korea; [email protected] (H.A.); [email protected] (Y.C.)
2 Department of Smart Fab. Technology, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, Republic of Korea;
[email protected]
* Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +82-31-290-7148

Abstract: In this study, a sliding-mode controller is designed using an adaptive reaching law with a
super-twisting algorithm. A dynamic model of a drone is designed with a quadrotor that has four
motors and considers disturbances and model uncertainties. Given that the drone operates as an
under-actuated system, its flight stability and maneuverability are influenced by the discontinuous
signal produced by the reaching law of the sliding-mode control. Therefore, this study aims to
improve the sliding-mode control and stability of drone flight using the proposed adaptive law,
which is based on exponential properties. The discontinuous signal of a conventional strategy is
overcome using the super-twisting algorithm, and the drone rapidly reaches equilibrium using the
proposed adaptive law that utilizes the sliding surface value. The proposed control strategy covers a
higher dimension than the conventional sliding-mode control strategy; the system stability is proven
using the strict Lyapunov function. The reaching time estimation results are introduced and used to
compare the respective reaching times of the control strategies. To verify the superior performance
of the proposed control method, multiple experiments are conducted under various situations and
realizations. The simulation results prove that the proposed control method achieved a superior
rapid response, stable maneuvering, and robustness with shorter reaching time.

Keywords: quadrotor drone; sliding-mode control; super-twisting algorithm; strict Lyapunov

Citation: Ahn, H.; Hu, M.; Chung, Y.; stability; adaptive control
You, K. Sliding-Mode Control for
Flight Stability of Quadrotor Drone
using Adaptive Super-Twisting
Reaching Law. Drones 2023, 7, 522. 1. Introduction
https://doi.org/10.3390/
A quadrotor is an unmanned aerial vehicle actuated by four motors, called drones.
drones7080522
quadcopters, and so on. Quadrotors manifest simplicity, controllability, and vertical takeoff
Academic Editor: Andrey V. Savkin and landing ability compared with other aircraft. By controlling the rotation direction of
Received: 12 July 2023
the four actuators, there is no requirement for an additional motor design to manipulate
Revised: 8 August 2023
forward directional movement, such as a helicopter. Furthermore, because the motor is
Accepted: 8 August 2023 oriented perpendicularly to the ground, the quadrotor drone can navigate tight spaces
Published: 9 August 2023 without the need for an airstrip like traditional airplanes and can hover by maintaining
a fixed 3-axis coordinate position. Unmanned aircraft vehicles are anticipated to take
the place of manned aircraft and submarines in a variety of functions, including remote
sensing, border patrol, aerial and underwater photography, environmental surveillance,
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. package delivery, imaging, inspection of various underwater structures, and military
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. operation [1]. Therefore, drones are used in various industrial applications and have
This article is an open access article promising prospects [2–5].
distributed under the terms and In several studies, proportional–integral–derivative (PID) and sliding-mode con-
conditions of the Creative Commons trol (SMC) techniques were used to control quadrotor stabilization and movement [6–9].
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
The PID method is widely used as a basic control technique due to its simplicity and ease
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
of design, not only for quadrotors but also for other control objects. However, several
4.0/).

Drones 2023, 7, 522. https://doi.org/10.3390/drones7080522 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/drones

Drones 2023, 7, 522 2 of 20

control techniques have been proposed to substitute for the PID method because of its
restricted response to disturbances, model uncertainty, and precision control. SMC has
been identified as an efficient nonlinear control strategy that shows robustness to external
disturbances and delays, which are included in most mechanical systems. Due to these
advantages, SMC overcomes the limitations of PID and is proposed as a control method
with robust performance [10,11].
The conventional SMC (CSMC) guarantees system stability based on a weak Lyapunov
function (WLF) with a sliding surface for finite-time convergence and robustness [12].
The sliding surface was designed in a second-order sliding plane based on the error between
the current and target states. The operating characteristics of the sliding plane are divided
into two phases. The first phase is the reaching phase, which indicates a process wherein
the initial state of the control target is settled on the sliding surface. The second phase is
the sliding phase, in which the state of the control target reaches the equilibrium origin of
the state space after reaching the phase. According to WLF, discontinuous control inputs
are generated in the sliding phase due to the derived sign function. This discontinuous
control input causes a chattering effect, and hence brings about unstable results on discrete
signal processing and control performance of the system when implementing hardware
and simulation. In order to improve the chattering effect, several studies were presented.
Labbadi [13] proposed an advanced sliding mode controller for a quadrotor drone’s position
and attitude. The exponential reaching law was suggested, with modifying of the sign
term as hyperbolic tangent function to overcome the discontinuous signal. Nekoukar [14]
proposed the adaptive fuzzy terminal sliding mode strategy to control the attitude of
a quadrotor. The position controller was designed with a PD controller for providing
continuous desired signal. Moreover, many studies have been conducted to overcome this
chattering effect [15–17].
In this study, the chattering effect was overcome and the flight performance of the
quadrotor was improved. Therefore, we applied the super-twisting algorithm (STA) in the
design of CSMC for a quadrotor to overcome the chattering effect. As STA is a continuous
design technique that integrates the discontinuous signal generated in the sliding phase, it
transforms the conventional single-dimensional control input of CSMC into a second-order
control input. Although the single-dimensional control law proves the stability of the
system through the conventional Lyapunov function, that is, WLF, the secondary control
input should be guaranteed by other stability conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to
evaluate the stability of the high-order control inputs. In this study, the stability of the
secondary control input was proven using a strict Lyapunov function (SLF). The condition
required for the sliding surface to converge to zero is referred to as the attractiveness
condition [18,19]. To satisfy the attractiveness condition in the higher dimension of the
control law, the evaluation in linear algebra is performed using the algebraic Lyapunov
equation (ALE).
The primary issues for SMC are the stability of the system and finiteness of the reaching
time. As STA is applied to the CSMC method, stability evaluation is performed through
SLF with ALE, and the reaching time in STA can be derived from SLF conventionally
proven as ALE [20]. In this study, an adaptive law is proposed and proven through the
reaching time, which is faster than the reaching time of the traditional STA (TSTA). As the
proposed adaptive law cannot be verified using the traditional reaching time estimation
method, a novel estimation method is required for a specific comparison. Therefore, in this
study, the proposed reaching time estimation method is adopted [21].
Various methods have been used in several studies on SMC strategies for quadrotors.
Huang [22] proposed a control method that guaranteed the stability of the system in
uncertainty and extremely strong disturbances through an adaptive method. Huang
proved the error convergence of the control method mathematically and demonstrated
its performance through simulations. Eliker [23] proposed an adaptive terminal SMC
controller that focused on the finiteness of the reaching time. The robustness of the system
was secured by proposing an adaptive method to estimate disturbances within a finite time.
Drones 2023, 7, 522 3 of 20

Luo [24] presented a gain-adaptation mechanism for the STA for adaptive sliding-mode
controller design. Derafa [25] implemented the hardware using STA to the quadrotor and
mathematically proved the system stability and reaching time. Labbadi [26] proposed a
PID sliding surface by adding the integral equation of the error to a conventional sliding
surface and applied it to STA. This study improved the robustness of the system by adding
an adjustment factor.
Thus, the aforementioned studies [22–26] improved the performance of the conven-
tional control method using additional terms or adaptive laws without mathematical
comparison. Based on this research, STA with the adaptive law and/or an additional
mathematical term improved not only the chattering effect of CSMC but also the rapid
response and robustness of the system. We propose the exponential function based adap-
tive law with STA that induces inertial controllability for the stability of quadrotor flight.
Moreover, in this study, the reduction in reaching time is mathematically proven compared
to the conventional and traditional control methods. Therefore, we propose the adaptive
super-twisting reaching law (ASTRL) for effective performance of quadrotor flight.
In several studies, the performance of the controller was improved using the charac-
teristics of the exponential function [27,28]. The adaptive law proposed in this study is an
activation function based on the exponential term and sliding surface. In the sliding plane,
when the initial state of the system is far from the target state, the control input is applied
with a higher gain instead of a fixed control gain using a relatively large value of the sliding
surface value. In addition, when the system state is close to the target state, the control
input is applied with an adaptively reduced gain, considering the inertia affected by the
proposed adaptive control input. Therefore, the proposed adaptation scheme has a faster
response and robustness than other control schemes. In this study, the improvement in
rapid response and robustness using the proposed adaptive law is mathematically proven
through simulations and experiments.
The quadrotor is an under-actuated system with six degrees of freedom and four con-
trol outputs. Therefore, the error signals of the quadrotor were generated by designing four
objective states, and the simulation was conducted under the assumption that the position
and attitude of the quadrotor were measured by a gyroscope sensor, an accelerometer
sensor, and an ultrasonic sensor, and the noise generated by each sensor was considered.
The control input was designed in four types, and only the first control input was used
for the position control of the quadrotor. The position control input generated the refer-
ence angles of roll and pitch, which are required for quadrotor flight to satisfy the two
degrees of freedom. The simulation was performed considering the disturbance and model
uncertainty occurring in the tracking trajectory of the quadrotor.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the modeling of
the quadrotor is derived and the principle of operation of the quadrotor is introduced.
In Section 3, the flight control system is designed, and an adaptive law is proposed. In
Section 4, we demonstrate the stability of the system using the designed controller and
estimate its reaching time. In Sections 5 and 6, the simulation results and conclusions are
presented, respectively.

2. Dynamic Modeling of Quadrotor Drone

Quadrotor drones are typically designed with four actuators oriented perpendicular
to the ground. In this study, structural definition and dynamic modeling were adopted
for the Parrot Mambo mini drone. Figure 1 shows a structural diagram of a quadrotor.
The quadrotor can hover when the counter-clockwise rotational direction of the actuator
(ω1 , ω3 ) and the clockwise rotational direction of the actuator (ω2 , ω4 ) are designed to
be equal.
Drones 2023, 7, 522 4 of 20

Figure 1. Structural diagram of quadrotor.

Quadrotor hovering is possible with symmetrically different rotational directions,

and the parameters of the quadrotor used in this study are defined as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 also specifies the definition of the position ( x, y, z) and attitude (φ, θ, ψ) of the
quadrotor regarding the body frame. The quadrotor is an under-actuated system because it
must control six degrees of freedom ( x, y, z, φ, θ, ψ) with four actuators. For the quadrotor
system in this study, φ and θ are limited to be between −90 and +90 degrees, and yaw is
limited to be between -180 and +180 degrees for practical quadrotor flight. Based on the
limited attitude angles, the state-space form is obtained as follows [29,30]:

r4 U
ẍ = − ẋ + (cos φ sin θ cos ψ + sin φ sin ψ) 1 ,
m m
r5 U1
ÿ = − ẏ + (cos φ sin θ sin ψ − sin φ sin ψ) ,
m m
r6 U1
z̈ = − ż + g + cos φ cos θ ,
m m
Iy − Iz Jr r1 2 l (1)
φ̈ = θ̇ ψ̇ − ω θ̇ − φ̇ + U2 ,
Ix Ix Ix Ix
Iz − Ix Jr r l
θ̈ = φ̇ψ̇ + ω φ̇ − 2 θ̇ 2 + U3 ,
Iy Iy Iy Iy
Ix − Iy r U
ψ̈ = φ̇θ̇ − 3 ψ̇2 + 4 ,
Iz Iz Iz

where r1,2,··· ,6 denotes the aerodynamic resistance for each state, m denotes the mass of
the quadrotor, l denotes the distance from the center of the quadrotor to the actuator, g
denotes the gravitational acceleration, Ix,y,z denotes the coefficient of inertia corresponding
to each axis of the quadrotor, ω = −ω1 + ω2 − ω3 + ω4 denotes the overall speed of the
actuators, Jr denotes the inertia coefficient of the actuator, and U1 , U2 , U3 , U4 denote the
control inputs.
 T  T
In this paper, we consider X = x1 x2 · · · x6 = x y z φ θ ψ as
the state vector. The control inputs and velocity of the respective actuators are related
as follows:  
U1 = ρ1 ω12 + ω22 + ω32 + ω42 ,
 
U2 = ρ1 ω12 − ω22 − ω32 + ω42 ,
  (2)
U3 = ρ1 ω12 + ω22 − ω32 − ω42 ,
 
U4 = ρ2 −ω12 + ω22 − ω32 + ω42 ,

where ρ1 and ρ2 represent the thrust and drag coefficient, respectively. For position control
of the quadrotor, the auxiliary control input is considered as (cos φ sin θ cos ψ + sin φ sin ψ) ·
U1 /m and (cos φ sin θ sin ψ − sin φ sin ψ) · U1 /m in Equation (1). The auxiliary control
Drones 2023, 7, 522 5 of 20

input is used to calculate the desired roll and pitch (φd , θd ), which are controlled by U2 and
U3 , respectively. With small angle approximation, the translational dynamic of Equation (1)
can be calculated as the desired roll and pitch angles to obtain the virtual controller as
follows [31,32]:
m
φd = (− ẍd sin ψd + ÿd cos ψd ),
U1
m (3)
θd = (− ẍd cos ψd − ÿd sin ψd ).
U1
The values of φd and θd are equally limited to be between -90 and +90 as φ and θ, respectively.

3. Problem Formulation and Controller Design

From Equation (1), the conventional structure of the second-order state-space equation
can be obtained as follows [32]:

Ẍ = F(X) + G(X)U + D(t), (4)

where  T
U= U1 U2 U3 U4 ,
 T
F(X) = f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 ,
g1 0 0 0
 

 g2 0 0 0 
 (5)
 g3 0 0 0 
G(X) =  ,

 0 g4 0 0 

 0 0 g5 0 
0 0 0 g6
with
r4
f1 = − ,
m
r
f2 = − 5,
m
r6
f3 = − + g,
m
Iy − Iz Jr r
f4 = θ̇ ψ̇ − ω θ̇ − 1 φ̇2 ,
Ix Ix Ix
Iz − Ix Jr r
f5 = φ̇ψ̇ + ω φ̇ − 2 θ̇ 2 ,
Iy Iy Iy
Ix − Iy r
f6 = φ̇θ̇ − 3 ψ̇2 ,
Iz Iz
and
(cos φ sin θ cos ψ + sin φ sin ψ)
g1 = ,
m
(cos φ sin θ sin ψ − sin φ sin ψ)
g2 = ,
m
cos φ cos θ
g3 = ,
m
l
g4 = ,
Ix
l
g5 = ,
Iy
1
g6 = .
Iz
Here, D(t) is a system disturbance that includes unknown external disturbances and
nonlinear dynamic uncertainties assumed to be bounded. The objective of this study is to
Drones 2023, 7, 522 6 of 20

build a robust tracking control strategy that guarantees convergence of the output tracking
error for quadrotor flight.

Assumption 1. |D(t)| is supposed to be bounded by a positive constant considering the issue of

parametric uncertainties.

The diagram for the flight control scheme in this study is shown in Figure 2. The flight
command generated the reference trajectory and yaw angle for the desired attitude of the
quadrotor. The objective of this system was to derive a control law using the proposed
method. The designed control inputs were transformed into motor commands for the
actuators of the Parrot mini drone. The state of the quadrotor was measured using a
mounted sensor on the quadrotor. The system errors for the SMC design are defined
as follows:

E = X − Xd , (6)

where Xd denotes the desired state vector. The definition of a sliding surface by positional
error is as follows:

S = CE + Ė, (7)

where
 T
S = σ1 σ2 σ3 σ4 σ5 σ6 ,
C = diag(ci ), (ci > 0, i = 1, 2, · · · , 6)

is the slope of the sliding surface, which is a positive definite constant matrix. To satisfy
the attractiveness condition, the value of this sliding surface converges to zero for the
equilibrium of the position control system. The derivative of the sliding surface can be
expressed as follows:

Ṡ = CĖ + Ẍ − Ẍd ,
(8)
= CĖ + F + GU + D − Ẍd .

Figure 2. Control scheme of quadrotor drone.

Without any consideration of disturbance estimation method, the SMC law is obtained
as follows [33,34]:

U = G−1 CĖ + F − Ẍd − Ṡ ,

(9)
= Ueq + Url ,
Drones 2023, 7, 522 7 of 20

where Ueq and Url are equivalent controller and reaching law, respectively, and are ex-
pressed as follows:

Ueq = G−1 CĖ + F − Ẍd ,

(10)
Url = −G−1 Ṡ.

The reaching law (Url ) of CSMC is outlined as follows:

USMC = −G−1 Ṡ,

(11)
= −G−1 Ksgn(S),

where K = diag(k i ), i = 1, 2, · · · 6, denotes the CSMC control gain with k1,2,··· ,6 > 0. sgn(·)
refers to the sign of a variable and induces a discontinuous chattering effect. To eliminate
chattering, many studies have proposed TSTA to design the reaching law of the controller
with a continuous input as follows [35,36]:

USTA = −G−1 Ṡ,

 
= −G−1 K1 |S|1/2 sgn(S) + Udisc , (12)
U̇disc = K2 sgn(S),

where

K1 = diag(k1,i ), (k1,i > 0, i = 1, 2, · · · , 6),

K2 = diag(k2,i ), (k2,i > 0, i = 1, 2, · · · , 6).

In this study, using the exponential property along with the sliding surfaces, the adap-
tive method is proposed as follows:
β
L(σi ) = α + (1 − α)ε−|σi | , (13)

where 0 < α < 1 and β > 0 denote adjustable coefficients of the adaptive law, and ε
denotes a natural exponential constant. Therefore, the adaptive law is designed to satisfy
0 < L(·) ≤ 1. The singular case in which the function closes to zero was solved by setting
the minimum value of the function L(σi ) considering specification of the actuators.
Figure 3 shows the case in which the adaptive law is applied through a typical control
gain K gain = 10 and a sliding surface σ. As shown in Figure 3, the relationship between the
sliding surface and the adaptive law shows that the adaptive gain has symmetric results
based on the absolute value of the sliding surface. The proposed control scheme has a
higher gain than the conventional control gain (K gain = 10) because the absolute value of
the sliding surface is larger than 0. Therefore, the initial state quickly converges to a zero
error. The results of the adaptive law function values based on α and β are represented
in Figure 3A and B, respectively. Using Equations (12) and (13), the reaching law Url of
ASTRL is designed as follows:

Url = −G−1 Ṡ,

 
= −G−1 K1 L|S|1/2 sgn(S) + Udisc , (14)
U̇disc = K2 Lsgn(S),

where
 
L = diag L−1 (σi ) , (i = 1, 2, · · · , 6).
Drones 2023, 7, 522 8 of 20

Figure 3. Characteristic of the proposed adaptive law with K gain = 10: (A) the results of changing α,
(B) the results of changing β.

The adaptive law was designed as the denominator of the TSTA control gain. To con-
firm the performance of the adaptation scheme, the control gain of ASTRL in this study
was designed with the same value as the control gain of the TSTA. In this study, using
Equations (9) and (14), the proposed SMC law is expressed as follows:

U = G−1 CĖ + F − Ẍd 

−K1 L|S|1/2 sgn(S) + Udisc , (15)
U̇disc = K2 Lsgn(S).

Finally, the under-actuated system of the quadrotor is controlled by the proposed

Equation (15).

4. System Stability Analysis and Reaching Time Estimation

In this study, the proposed control method is evaluated using the SLF to ensure the
stability of the quadrotor system. As STA has a higher control dimension than CSMC, there
is a limit for verifying the stability of the system using WLF, which was used to evaluate
SMC. Therefore, STA stability is determined by the ALE in the unperturbed case.
As a conventional methodology, the stability of the SMC and STA strategies is guaran-
teed using the Lyapunov stability. However, considering the finiteness of the reaching time,
the state error of the system must converge within a finite time. Therefore, in this study, we
attempted to derive the exact reaching time of the proposed reaching law through a new
estimation method for the reaching time of STA [21] with specific gain conditions. The spe-
cific gain condition is identified in [21], covering the eigenvalue condition. In addition,
the TSTA reaching time has the same process as that of the reaching time comparison. This
section proves that ASTRL exhibits a mathematically rapid response compared with TSTA.

Theorem 1. If the proposed SMC method provided in Equation (15) with ASTRL of Equation (11)
is applied to the dynamic system in Equation (4), the stability of the closed-loop system and tracking
error convergence are ensured.

Proof. To prove the proposed Equation (15) and Theorem 1, an integrated reaching law
form is needed for individual elements of Equation (15). Therefore, the reaching law of
ASTA based on STA in references [25,37] is redefined as follows:
1
σ̇i1 = − L(Kσ1 ) |σi1 | 2 sign(σi1 ) + σi2 ,
K2
i1 (16)
σ̇i2 = − L(σi1 )
sign(σi1 ),
Drones 2023, 7, 522 9 of 20

where σi1 = e + cė is a typical sliding-mode surface, and K1,2 is a positive gain to be
designed. As the reaching law has two dimensions, the sliding surface can be defined in
a quadratic form. Accordingly, the Lyapunov function in [20] can be written in quadratic
form as follows:

V =ξ T Pξ, (17)

where P represents a symmetric positive definite matrix, and ξ represents a Lyapunov

vector in this study and can be expressed through a quadratic relationship in ASTRL. This
vector can be expressed mathematically using Equation (16) as follows:
 h i
ξ T = ξ 1 ξ 2 = |σi1 |1/2 sign(σi1 ) σi2 .

(18)

Differentiation of the Lyapunov vector is required for system stability determination

and time estimation. Considering Equations (16) and (18), the relation between the reaching
law and Lyapunov vector can be represented as follows [38]:

1
ξ̇ = Aξ, (19)
|ξ 1 |

where

− 2LK(σ1 1
" #
i1 ) 2
A= .
− L(Kσ2 ) 0
i1

The A matrix is a Hurwitz matrix, because its determinant is greater than zero. The fi-
nal solution of ALE is derived by differentiating the second-order Lyapunov function
through the A and P matrices as follows:

A T P + AP = −Q. (20)

According to the final solution of Equation (20), ALE is satisfied when Q is a symmetric
positive definite matrix. To determine the stability of the system, Equation (17) can be
expressed as follows:

λmin {P}kξ k22 ≤ ξ T Pξ ≤ λmax {P}kξ k22 , (21)

where λmin {·} and λmax {·} denote the minimum and maximum eigenvalues, respectively.
Considering the left term, Equation (22) can be derived as kξ k22 = ξ 12 + ξ 22 = |σi1 | + σi2
2.

−1/2
|ξ 1 | ≤ kξ k2 ≤ λmin {P}V1/2 . (22)

To prove the stability of the system using the ALE, the relationship between the
Lyapunov vector and Q is expressed as follows:

λmin {Q}kξ k22 ≤ ξ T Qξ ≤ λmax {Q}kξ k22 . (23)

Considering the term on the left in Equation (23), −|ξ 1 |−1/2 ξ T Qξ ≤ −|ξ 1 |−1/2 λmin
{Q}kξ k22 . Therefore, by multiplying the right side of Equation (21) by −|ξ 1 |−1/2 λmin {Q}
on both sides, the following expression can be obtained:

−|ξ 1 |−1/2 λmin {Q}kξ k22 ≤ −|ξ 1 |−1/2 λmin {Q} · λmax
−1
{P} · V. (24)

According to Equation (22), Equation (25) is as follows:

−|ξ 1 |−1/2 ≤ −λ1/2

min { P } V
−1/2
. (25)
Drones 2023, 7, 522 10 of 20

Using Equations (24) and (25), we obtain the following:

−|ξ 1 |−1/2 ξ T Qξ ≤ −|ξ 1 |−1/2 λmin {Q}kξ k22

λ1/2
min { P } λmin { Q } 1/2
≤− V . (26)
λmax {P}

With the result of Equation (26), the derivative of Lyapunov function is expressed
as follows:
V̇ = −|ξ 1 |−1/2 ξ T Qξ ≤ −γ(Q)V1/2 ,
λ1/2 {P}λmin {Q} (27)
γ(Q) = min .
λmax {P}
According to Equation (27), because γ(Q) is positive, SLF is satisfied with tracking
error convergence within a finite reaching time derived as follows [12]:

2
Tc = V1/2 . (28)
γ(Q)

However, the conventionally derived reaching time in Equation (28) is not suitable for
comparing the accurate reaching time of TSTA with the proposed method because γ(Q)
is determined by an arbitrary symmetric positive definite matrix P. Therefore, a novel
estimation method is proposed to demonstrate that the reaching time of ASTRL is shorter
than that of TSTA.

Assumption 2. TSTA and ASTRL expressed in Equations (12) and (14) are considered to be
unperturbed cases with the gain condition k21 ≥ 8k2 [21]. The sliding surface becomes σi1 = 0 when
the state error of the system converges to zero within a finite time.

Theorem 2. ASTRL expressed in Equation (15) has a rapid response due to the fast estimated
reaching time compared to TSTA in Equation (12).

Proof. As the dimension of the STA control input increases, the differential value of a
typical sliding surface σi1 includes perturbations. However, in this study, the finiteness
of the reaching time, that is, σi1 = 0, is demonstrated under the specific gain condition
and the assumption that there is no perturbation. The following equation is presented as a
solution for a continuous function ξ (t) satisfying Equation (19) [21]:

ξ (t) = εAη (t) ξ (0). (29)

In this equation, ε means the Euler’s constant, the function η (t) denotes the to-be-
determined function, and η (0) is 0 because of the initial condition ξ (0) = 0 when t = 0.
The derivative of the function η (t) is obtained by substituting Equation (29) into (19) as
follows:
1 1
η̇ (t) = = T Aη . (30)
|ξ 1 | e 1 ε ξ (0)

In this equation, e1 refers to e1 = [1 0] T . By multiplying dt and integrating both sides

of Equation (30), the relation can be obtained as follows:
Z η (t)
e1T εAτ ξ (0) dτ = t. (31)
0
Drones 2023, 7, 522 11 of 20

Considering that ξ (t) converges to zero as the system is stable, the function η (t) should
diverge to infinity. The following equation is supposed to be guaranteed:

lim η (t) = ∞, (32)

t→ T

where T denotes the reaching time. By applying Equation (32) to both sides of Equation (31),
an expression for the reaching time can be obtained. Therefore, an explicit infinite solution
for ASTRL without perturbation is expressed as follows:
Z ∞
T= e1T εAη ξ (0) dη. (33)
0

For comparison with TSTA, the reaching time of TSTA is also obtained as follows:
Z ∞
TTSTA = e1T εÃη ξ (0) dη. (34)
0

Here, TTSTA is the reaching time of TSTA.

− K21 1
 
à = 2 .
− K2 0

Equations (33) and (34) can be calculated as follows, respectively [21]:

L(σ )
T = K2i1 |ξ 2 (σi1 ) − 2ξ 1 (σi1 )|,
(35)
TTSTA = K12 |ξ 2 (σi1 ) − 2ξ 1 (σi1 )|.

Finally, because 0 < L(σi1 ) ≤ 1, and L(σi1 ) K1 ≤ 1/K1 , T ≤ TTSTA has become clear.
Thus, it is mathematically proven that the reaching time of ASTRL is smaller than that
of TSTA.

5. Simulation and Experiment

In this study, simulations and experiments were conducted using MATLAB and
Simulink for the quadrotor drone flight. The solver of the simulation was chosen as ODE3,
and a fixed step size was defined as 0.01 s. All experiments were performed for three
simulations. The first scenario (Simulation I) was an x-axis fixed-roll angle step response
experiment. First, assuming that the axis was fixed, the attitude-control flight stability of the
drone was tested. The response between the roll angle and reference angle was confirmed
through the first simulation. The second scenario (Simulation II) was a comparison of the
3D trajectory tracking performance using Simulink. We used the Parrot Mambo platform
as the Simulink application, which is a support package for Parrot mini drones.
Considering the sensor noise and wind disturbance, the simulation was verified using
a virtual machine for a realistic environment. The platform comprises tools for realizing a
drone in a 3D environment before the hardware is actuated. In this experiment, the position,
attitude, and control input response of the virtual Parrot drone were confirmed using a
predefined reference trajectory. The third scenario (Experiment I) was developed using
a Parrot Mambo mini drone. The hovering performance of the proposed controller was
evaluated by directly checking the flight log. Table 1 presents the parameters for the Parrot
drone modeling for the overall simulation [39].
Simulation I was conducted to stabilize the attitude of the drone. The proposed
controller was compared with the CSMC and TSTA strategies based on the roll angle
response of the drone by commanding a reference angle. As the quadrotor drone is an
under-actuated system, its state has a complex effect on the other states. To confirm the
monotonic performance of the proposed controller, only the roll response of the quadrotor
was checked after fixing its position in the x-direction. Table 2 lists the control parameters
for Simulation I. The gain of each controller was tuned to achieve optimal performance,
Drones 2023, 7, 522 12 of 20

and the slope of the sliding surface was set to the same value for each controller to confirm
the accuracy of the performance. In the case of TSTA and ASTRL, the control gains were
set to the same values, but only ASTRL had more control parameters for the adaptive law.

Table 1. Parameters for drone modeling [39].

Specification Parameter Value Unit

Quadrotor mass m 0.0630 kg
Gravity acceleration g 9.8066 m/s2
Lateral moment arm l 0.0624 m
Rolling moment of inertia Ix 0.0583 × 10−3 kg · m2
Pitching moment of inertia Iy 0.0717 × 10−3 kg · m2
Yawing moment of inertia Iz 0.1000 × 10−3 kg · m2
Air resistance r1,2,3,4,5,6 0.0100 Ns/m
Thrust coefficient ρ1 0.0107 Ns2
Drag coefficient ρ2 0.7826 × 10−3 N · ms2
Rotor moment of inertia Jr 0.1021 × 10−6 kg · m2

Table 2. Control parameters for Simulation I.

Parameter Value
c4 5
k4 60
k1,4 30
k2,4 30
α 0.5
β 0.9

Figure 4 shows the roll angle response of the quadrotor in Simulation I. The simulation
was conducted for 20 s. In Figure 4A, the roll response of the fixed quadrotor is shown,
and the reference angle is the dashed black line, which consists of a step signal set to
30◦ in 4 s. The initial roll state of the fixed quadrotor was set to 0◦ . The green dashed-
dotted line is the response by CSMC, the blue dotted line is the response by TSTA, and red
solid line is the response by ASTRL. Figure 4B shows the roll error corresponding to
Figure 4A. According to Figure 4B, ASTRL overcomes the error the fastest, and the roll error
converges to 0. The exact arrival times, overshoots, and settling times of the controllers
are listed in Table 3. In the case of arrival time, STA and ASTA have similar performances;
however, the proposed controller has the best performance when considering overshoot
and settling time.
Figure 5 shows the control input and sliding plane actions of the controllers according
to Figure 4. In Figure 5A, the chattering band of CSMC input occurs after CSMC settling
time of 7.05 s. On the other hand, TSTA and ASTRL have continuous control inputs even
after their respective settling times. Figure 5B shows the operating characteristics of each
controller in the sliding plane. The black dashed line represents the sliding surface, and the
slope was set to five. To reach the equilibrium point, the initial state of all the controllers
reached the origin in a clockwise direction. As shown in Figure 5B, the proposed controller
arrived at the origin with the shortest trajectory in the sliding plane.
Simulation II was designed to control the flight path of the quadrotor drone. In this
simulation, the Simulink support package for Parrot mini drones, which is an application
of Simulink provided by Parrot, was used to construct a realistic environment. This
application provides firmware built for the virtual hardware controller. Based on the data
output from a realistic environment, the drone was 3D visualized in Simulink. The drone
flew following the reference trajectory for 100 s in this environment.
Drones 2023, 7, 522 13 of 20

Figure 4. Roll angle step response with fixed x-direction: (A) roll response, (B) roll error.

Figure 5. Control input and sliding plane actions of each controller: (A) respective control input,
(B) respective phase of sliding plane.

Table 3. Controller performance for Simulation I.

Strategy Arrival Time Overshoot Settling Time

SMC 3.60 s 50.57 (deg) 7.05 s
STA 3.47 s 37.17 (deg) 5.11 s
ASTA 3.47 s 30.82 (deg) 4.41 s

Figure 6 shows the 3D visualization results and simulation scheme that represents the
quadrotor drone of the Parrot Mambo mini drone under experimental conditions. In a 3D
environment, a flat ground surface was implemented for the ground assertion flag, sensor
noise, and wind disturbance. Figure 6 shows the preparation of the quadrotor with all
propellers pointing up on the flat ground surface before the takeoff. Figure 6 also shows
the quadrotor flight following the reference trajectory. The proposed simulation model
consists of a flight command, flight control system, measurement sensor, environment,
and airframe of the quadrotor model. In this study, we developed a flight control system
and designed the proposed controller by replacing the existing the flight control system
represented in Figure 6 with CSMC, TSTA, and ASTARL for comparative study.
Drones 2023, 7, 522 14 of 20

Figure 6. Three-dimensional visualization and simulation scheme implemented by Simulink.

As shown in Figures 7 and 8, the sensor noise and wind disturbance of Simulation II
were implemented as white Gaussian noise. In the case of sensor noise, the noise from the
accelerometer, gyro, and pressure sensors was implemented, and the noise was added to
the data corresponding to x, y, φ, θ, ψ, and z, respectively. These sensor noises can cause
model uncertainty and parametric errors, and they can affect the drone system modeling
by the disturbance term in Equation (4). For wind disturbance, the wind speed was set
to within approximately ±0.5 m/s, and the disturbance in the y-direction was set a little
stronger, that is, ±0.8 m/s.

Figure 7. Sensor noise implementation.

Figure 8. Wind disturbance implementation.

Figure 9 shows the position and attitude-control performance of the proposed con-
troller based on the reference trajectory. To compare the proposed strategies, the controllers
compared in Simulation I for the roll angle step response (CSMC and TSTA) were imple-
mented identically in Simulation II for trajectory tracking. Starting at the initial position
( x0 , y0 , z0 ) = (0, 0, 0), the quadrotor implemented with the proposed controller followed a
trajectory based on the reference Equation (36) for 100 s:
Drones 2023, 7, 522 15 of 20

xd = 12 · sin(0.06 · πt),
yd = 12 · cos(0.06 · πt),
(36)
zd = 9,
ψd = 0.

Figure 9. Position and attitude-control performance of proposed method.

We used the control parameter for Simulation II represented in Table 4. The plots in the
first column of Figure 9 correspond to the position response, the second column represents
the position response error, and the third column represents the attitude response. In all the
cases of position response, the proposed controller shows the best performance, overcoming
the entire disturbances represented in Figures 7 and 8. For tracking errors based on the
x- and y-position response, ASTRL converges to zero error the fastest. In the case of the
z-position response, to move the quadrotor to the reference position, the tracking error
in the z-direction decreases as the propeller is directed to the initial reference trajectory.
However, when the target z-value is reached, the quadrotor is supposed to change the
direction of the propeller to be in the opposite direction. Due to this operation, the z-
position response has a single shudder. In the error based on the z-position response,
the proposed controller handles the wave most stably, as shown in Figure 9. In the attitude
response, under the same sensor noise and wind disturbance environment that induce
model uncertainty, parametric error, and physical obstruction, TSTA and ASTRL effectively
outperformed the CSMC. According to the third column of Figure 9, TSTA and ASTRL are
less affected than CSMC in roll and pitch responses to entire disturbances.
Figure 10 shows the control inputs of the compared controllers. Each row represents
the control input of the quadrotor to its respective controller. Compared to Simulation I,
the reference angle for quadrotor flight was calculated in radians; therefore, the control
inputs in Figure 10 were induced to be smaller than the result values in Figure 5. Con-
sidering stable hovering and reasonable actuator operation, U1 was limited to be within
(1, 2), U2 and U3 were limited to be within (−0.2, 0.2), and U4 was limited to be within
(−0.05, 0.05). In all control inputs, TSTA and ASTRL significantly reduced the chattering
effect that occurred in the control inputs of CSMC. Continuous control inputs of TSTA and
ASTRL overcome chattering caused by discontinuous control inputs of CSMC. As ASTRL
has better performance in position and attitude of the quadrotor, ASTRL has a dynamic
control input compared to TSTA by adaptive law, overcoming the chattering effect.
Drones 2023, 7, 522 16 of 20

Table 4. Control parameters for Simulation II.

Specification Parameter Value

Slope of sliding surface c1,2,··· ,6 2.5
CSMC gain K = diag(k i ) diag (0.50, 0.50, 0.50,
0.01,0 .01, 0.01)
diag (1.00, 1.00, 1.00,


ASTRL and TSTA gain 1 K1 = diag k1,i
0.02, 0.02, 0.02)
diag (0.01, 0.01, 0.01,


ASTRL and TSTA gain 2 K2 = diag k2,i
0.03, 0.03, 0.03)
ASTRL parameter 1 α 0.9
ASTRL parameter 2 β 0.4

Figure 10. Control input comparison of different control methods.

Experiment I was conducted using the Parrot Mambo mini drone platform, MATLAB,
and Simulink. As the quadrotor drone endured single designated waypoint, a response
with six degrees of freedom was observed. The proposed controller ASTRL strategy was
updated to quadrotor firmware using the Simulink support package for the Parrot mini
drone application. In this application, the firmware built into Simulink was updated to
the quadrotor through the CRS 4.0 dongle Bluetooth module without a remote controller.
The 3D visualization was configured by receiving the flight data of the quadrotor in real
time from Simulink via Bluetooth communication. This support package was designed
with additional controls for takeoff and landing.
Figure 11 shows the experimental scheme for the Parrot Mambo platform. Figure 11A,B
show the experimental scheme and the experimental environment, respectively. The Par-
rot Mambo mini drone platform was equipped with an acceleration sensor, gyro sensor,
and ultrasonic sensor, and the position and attitude were measured using these sensors.
The accelerometer and gyro sensor were built into the vehicle, and an ultrasonic sensor
was installed at the bottom of the vehicle to face the ground. After the firmware was
updated, the quadrotor received flight commands through the developed Simulink and
maneuvers. As shown in Figure 11B, this experiment used wind gusts to overcome the
external flight impediments. The numerical value of wind disturbance corresponded to a
wind speed of 3–5 m/s in the positive x- and y-direction and was implemented using a fan.
The experiment was conducted for 25 s for each controller.
Drones 2023, 7, 522 17 of 20

(A) (B)

Figure 11. Experiment scheme of Parrot Mambo platform: (A) hardware of mini drone, (B) experiment
implementation scheme.

Table 5 and Figure 12 show the control parameters for Experiment I, 3D visualization,
and the x − y plane for the experimental results. The specifications of all lines illustrated in
the figure are the same as those in Simulation II. As shown in Figure 12A, the experiment
moved from the initial point to the objective point with wind disturbance and continued
hovering. As shown in Figure 12, the proposed controller in the same experimental
environment shows the closest position response to the objective point.

Figure 12. Visualization for experiment result: (A) position response in 3D, (B) x − y position response
in 2D.

Table 5. Control parameter for Experiment I.

Specification Parameter Value

Slope of sliding surface c1,2,··· ,6 1
CSMC gain K = diag(k i ) diag(10, 10, 10,
0.3, 0.3, 0.001)
diag(15, 15, 15,


ASTRL and TSTA gain 1 K1 = diag k1,i
0.4, 0.4, 0.01)
diag(0.5, 0.5, 0.5,


ASTRL and TSTA gain 2 K2 = diag k2,i
0.0001, 0.0001, 0.0001)
ASTRL parameter 1 α 0.5
ASTRL parameter 2 β 0.3

Figure 13 shows the results of Figure 12 with respect to time. The reference line
represents the objective point in continuous time. ASTRL is closest to the reference line
compared with CSMC and TSTA in the x- and y-direction responses. In the z-direction
response, CSMC has an inevitable steady-state error, but TSTA and ASTRL reduce the
z-position error over time. In the attitude response, ASTRL shows a flight attitude that
Drones 2023, 7, 522 18 of 20

allows the quadrotor to pursue stable flight compared with CSMC and TSTA. The results
of the platform experiment indicate that the proposed controller is effective. The following
link represents the real-time Experiment I for comparison of the respective controller:
https://youtu.be/vNh4nQqz8Fs (accessed on 1 August 2023).

Figure 13. Position and attitude response for experiment result.

6. Conclusions
In this study, to improve the performance of quadrotor drone control through CSMC,
TSTA was used to effectively reduce the chattering effect, which is a critical disadvantage
of the SMC. For the control of the under-actuated quadrotor drone, the six-degrees-of-
freedom challenge was addressed using four actuators by introducing additional target
degrees of freedom. To improve TSTA, ASTRL was introduced by proposing an exponen-
tial function based adaptive law for a rapid response and flight stability. To apply this
technique, the stability of the proposed controller was strictly verified through SLF and
ALE. The superiority of ASTRL was mathematically verified through a novel reaching time
estimation. Simulation results and platform experiments support the demonstration of
ASTRL outperformance, which induces more stable maneuvering of drone. In the future,
a better performance can be achieved with stable flight in the application of cutting-edge
technology fields, such as object detection technology using drones, load-bearing flight,
and adaptation technology to respond to strong disturbances such as natural wind.

Author Contributions: This research was accomplished by all the authors. H.A. and K.Y. conceived
the idea, performed the analysis, and designed the simulation; H.A. and M.H. conducted the numeri-
cal simulations; H.A., Y.C. and K.Y. co-wrote the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the
published version of the manuscript.
Drones 2023, 7, 522 19 of 20

Funding: This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant
funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (NRF-2019R1A2C1002343) and the BK21 FOUR Project.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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