Tracking Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Time-Delays Based on Event-Triggered Mechanism

Abstract

A position tracking control approach is presented for quad-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with multiple state time-delays and external disturbances based on an event-triggered mechanism. This approach achieves the desired performance by using less control execution, which results in a reduction in the usage rate of the onboard embedded microprocessor. First, the basic control structure is formed by a weighted multiple-model method. Next, the event-triggered mechanism is designed in such a way to achieve an aperiodic control approach. This is done by embedding the mechanism into the existed control structure. Additionally, the negative influence of time-delays and external disturbances are considered using a linear matrix inequality (LMI) technique based on a Lyapunov funciton. This allows the coefficients of the controller and event-triggered mechanism to be obtained. Consequently, the system can be stabilized and performs robustly. The position tracking control approach is applied to a quad-rotor UAV and the simulation results confirm its effectiveness.