Sliding Mode Control for Image-based Visual Servoing of Autonomous Quadrotor

The image-based servoing of quadrotors faces challenges such as the dynamic coupling of quadrotor flight mechanics, sensitivity to target flight attitudes, and environmental complexity. Designing an effective image-based visual servoing (IBVS) controller is crucial for enhancing the autonomy and task performance of quadrotors. This paper investigates the vision servo control of a quadrotor UAV with a front-facing camera in the presence of external disturbances. Firstly, a quadrotor model with a front-facing camera is proposed. The quadrotor performs target tracking using only a low-cost monocular camera and an inertial measurement unit. This paper improves upon the use of two virtual image planes to decouple the quadrotor into a position control subsystem and a yaw angle control subsystem. For the control system, which may be subject to external force disturbances, a sliding mode control method is employed. Simulation experiments were then conducted in MATLAB and AirSim to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.