Payload dropping control of an unmanned quadrotor helicopter based on backstepping controller

Quadrotors have generated considerable interest in both the control community due to their simple dynamics and widely applications because of their advantages over regular air vehicles. Unlike other control algorithms that tend to linearize nonlinear systems, backstepping control does not work to cancel the nonlinearities in the system. This leads to more flexible designs since some of the nonlinear terms can contribute to the stability of the system. The backstepping control is implemented in this paper for the robustness of the quadrotor helicopter in the payload dropping process. This control algorithm is implemented on the parameters of an unmanned quadrotor helicopter platform known as Qball-X4 available at the Networked Autonomous Vehicles Lab of Concordia University. Simulation results carried out using a nonlinear model, and wherein the performance achieved with this control strategy is shown.