Full Attitude Control of a Quadrotor Using Fast Nonsingular Terminal Sliding Mode with Angular Velocity Planning

In this article, a fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode combined with angular velocity planning (FNTSM-AVP) controller is developed to achieve high-speed, accurate, and robust attitude tracking performance for a quadrotor. The proposed controller employs a sliding surface function with a continuous arctangent function, which can effectively eliminate chattering behavior on the quadrotor while retaining the speed and accuracy of attitude tracking. Unlike conventional methods, the proposed controller preferentially recovers the roll and pitch angles at desired attitude by planning the shortest arrival path, which is effective to improve the tracking performance. Finally, the finite time convergence and zero tracking error properties of the closed-loop control system under the proposed FNTSM-AVP are analyzed and proved. The aggressive flight experiments demonstrate the advantage of faster convergence and fewer chattering behavior of the proposed method compared to the existing FNTSM controller.