Integrated Design of Rotary UAV Guidance and Control Systems Utilizing Sliding Mode Control Technique

In this paper, the Integrated Guidance and Control (IGC) law is proposed for the Rotary Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (RUAV). The objective of the IGC law is to consider the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of the RUAV and to design a guidance law which takes into consideration the nonlinear relationship between kinematics and dynamics. In order to control the RUAV system, sliding mode control scheme is adopted. As the RUAV is an under-actuated system, a slack variable approach is used to generate the available control inputs. Through the Lyapunov stability theorem, the stability of the proposed IGC law is proved. In order to verify the performance of the IGC law, numerical simulations are performed for waypoint tracking missions.