Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion Control for Quadrotor UAV With an Angular Accelerometer

Incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) is a promising method in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control. However, the angular acceleration in INDI is mostly obtained indirectly, such as through the angular rate differential. It will affect the performance of the controller. In this paper, the INDI control strategy with an angular accelerometer direct measurement is proposed for the quadrotor UAV. Firstly, a nonlinear quadrotor UAV model and an angular accelerometer error model are designed based on Newton-Euler equation and Allan variance method, respectively. Besides, the actuator dynamics is introduced. Then, INDI control law is utilized for the design of both position and attitude controller. The controllers are designed to be cascaded for robust and accurate trajectory tracking. Finally, considering the properties of angular acceleration measured by the angular accelerometer, simulations are conducted. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed controller has good performance in disturbance rejection and 3D trajectory tracking.