Control of Quadrotor Equipped with a Two DOF Robotic Arm

The quadrotor equipped with a robotic arm has been applied to many fields recently. This paper deals with the problem of quadrotor stabilization and trajectory tracking equipped with a 2-DOF robotic arm. By considering the robotic arm as an independent part to affect the center of gravity (COG) of the vehicle, the kinematic and dynamic models are derived. The controller for the whole system is designed with two stages. First, a backstepping sliding mode controller is applied to position tracking (outer loop) and generating desired attitudes for inner loop. Then a backstepping controller with integral action is built for attitude stabilization (inner loop). In addition, a COG compensation system is developed for the controller to cope with the COG variation caused by movement of the robotic arm. Finally, several simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approaches.