Abstract
In this paper, we present a controller design for a quadrotor by obtaining the derivative of the actual control input using the concept of multiple sliding surfaces and Lyapunov stability analysis. The conventional sliding mode controller is highly robust. The discontinuous part of the control input suppresses disturbances well. Theoretically, however, this discontinuity causes rapid switching of the control input (chattering) which results in large energy consumption and inefficiency. The proposed control method formulates the derivative of control input (having the discontinuity) which upon integrating provides a smoother control input when compared to the classical sliding mode control. The quadrotor with our proposed controller is subjected to varying wind disturbance scenarios and its performance is bench-marked against a PID controller and a conventional sliding mode controller. A saturation function sat is used instead of the sign for the classical sliding mode controller as well as the the proposed novel controller design in all sections from 4.2. The reasoning behind this is discussed in the results section of the paper.
