Continuous Differentiator Based on Adaptive Second-Order Sliding-Mode Control for a 3-DOF Helicopter

A novel control scheme for the regulation and trajectory tracking in spite of external perturbations of the three degrees of freedom (3-DOF) helicopter is presented. The scheme allows reduced control effort, vibration reduction, and accurate tracking. The proposed approach combines a continuous differentiator with an adaptive super twisting controller. The differentiator provides state estimation, whereas the adaptive super twisting algorithm is chosen such that the gains of the controller are adapted to reduce the control effort and do not require the knowledge of the bounds of the uncertainties and perturbations. Furthermore, finite time convergence of the continuous differentiator to a neighborhood of the desired trajectory, allows to design independently controller and the differentiator, satisfying the principle of separation. Finally, the proposed control scheme is validated by experimental tests under external disturbances.