Sliding Mode Controller of Quadcopter for Altitude Regulation and Square Trajectory Tracking
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37375/gakhpw67Keywords:
quadcopter, sliding mode control, altitude control, square trajectory tracking.Abstract
In recent years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), particularly quadrotor systems, have attracted considerable research interest owing to their vertical takeoff and landing capabilities, agility, and versatility in applications ranging from surveillance and environmental monitoring to search and rescue missions. The quadcopter is modeled as a six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) rigid body system with four rotors. Its dynamics are inherently nonlinear and strongly coupled, influenced by thrust forces, torques, gravitational forces, and aerodynamic effects. The Newton–Euler formulation is used to derive the translational and rotational equations of motion.
This research introduced sliding mode controller to overcome suffering limitation of conventional PID controller. The simulation using matlab Simulink library and codes to simulate the proposed model.
Simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed controller, highlighting improvements in trajectory tracking accuracy, robustness, and overall flight stability.
References
[1] C. V. Nguyen, M. T. Nguyen, H. T. Tran, M. L. Trinh, H. M. La, and H. T. T. Nguyen, “Trajectory Tracking Control for a Quadcopter under External Disturbances,” Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research, vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 17620–17628, 2024, doi: 10.48084/etasr.8449.
[2] T. L. Mien and V. Duy, “The Altitude and Position PID Controllers Design for UAV Quadcopter: From Theory to Experiment,” Journal of Measurement, Control and Automation, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 23–32, Oct. 2025, doi: 10.64032/mca.v29i3.318.
[3] X. Wu, Y. Pan, Q. Chen, N. Zheng, and Z. Chen, “Attitude Control of a Quadcopter UAV Using Sliding Mode Control with an Improved Extended State Observer,” Electronics, vol. 14, no. 22, p. 4416, 2025, doi: 10.3390/electronics14224416.
[4] Z. Rakhman and A. Arkham, “Robust Control of a Quadcopter Flying via Sliding Mode,” Journal of Science and Application Technology, 2024, doi: 10.35472/281446.
[5] K. A. E. Husain, M. A. Mahmoud, M. M. Essa, and M. A. Shtewi, “Control of Quadcopter Altitude Using PID Controller,” Libyan Open University Journal of Applied Sciences (LOUJAS), vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 137–153, 2026.
[6] M. R. Chughtai, M. L. Anjum, I. Ahmad, M. Iqbal, D. Almakhles, and M. Abdelrahim, “Trajectory Tracking Control Design for Quadcopter Based on Optimized Integral Super-Twisting Sliding Mode Technique,” Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal, vol. 72, p. 102222, 2025, doi: 10.1016/j.jestch.2025.102222.
[7] N. P. Nguyen, N. X. Mung, H. L. N. N. Thanh, and S. K. Hong, “Adaptive Sliding Mode Control for Attitude and Altitude System of a Quadcopter UAV via Neural Network,” IEEE Access, 2021, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3064883.
[8] M. Maaruf, A. N. Abubakar, and M. M. Gulzar, “Adaptive Backstepping and Sliding Mode Control of a Quadrotor,” Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering, vol. 46, p. 630, 2024, doi: 10.1007/s40430-024-05188-z.
[9] F. Serrano, O. Castillo, M. Alassafi, F. Alsaadi, and A. Ahmad, “Terminal Sliding Mode Attitude-Position Quaternion Based Control of Quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle,” Advances in Space Research, 2023, doi: 10.1016/j.asr.2023.02.030.
