Tracking controller design for quadrotor UAVs under external disturbances using a high-order sliding mode-assisted disturbance observer

Quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating in agricultural fields for aerial photography are susceptible to external disturbances. The disturbances result in trajectory deviation and irregular image overlapping that considerably degrade image quality. Disturbance observers (DOs) are commonly researched for counteracting these effects but may have delays and limitations in handling diverse and high-frequency disturbances. To this end, this work proposes a continuous high-order sliding mode-assisted DO (HSMDO) with limited time convergence characteristics for the estimation of disturbances in systems. The observer consists of a classical nonlinear DO (NDO) and a sliding mode-assisted system (SMAS). The NDO is used to estimate disturbances preliminarily. The SMAS is utilised to assist the NDO in estimating the high-frequency component of disturbances and ensure that the entire DO is finite-time convergent. Finally, the tracking controller is designed on the basis of the HSMDO, which enables UAVs to track the prescribed trajectories under disturbances stably. Simulation results show that the proposed HSMDO can accurately estimate various types of disturbances. Moreover, the tracking controller based on the HSMDO can improve the antidisturbance performance of systems and ensure the trajectory tracking accuracy of UAVs.