Adaptive event-triggered control for quadrotor aircraft with output constraints

Abstract This paper investigates the trajectory tracking problem of a quadrotor with six degrees of freedom (6-DOF) in the case of time-varying and asymmetric output constraints. To satisfy the output constraints, an Asymmetric Barrier Lyapunov Function (ABLF) is constructed and the control loop of the quadrotor is divided into position and attitude loop respectively. In the position loop, the adaptive controller is applied to estimate the upper bound of external interference online, and Dynamic Surface Control (DSC) technology is devoted to solve the ‘explosion of complexity’ problem of the traditional backstepping design process. Moreover, event-triggered control is implemented to the attitude loop controller design to reduce signal transmitting and communication burden in which the knowledge of the upper bounds of event-triggered thresholds is not required to be known in advance. Finally, the simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the control method of this technology.