Trajectory tracking control of active disturbance rejection unmanned aerial vehicles in wind disturbance environment

Abstract

In windy conditions, quadcopters often suffer from degraded trajectory tracking performance due to external disturbances. To tackle this issue, this paper presents an Improved Dual-Loop ADRC (ADRC-backstepping-SMC composite controller) for quadcopter trajectory tracking. A dynamic model considering wind disturbance is first established to characterize the influence of wind disturbances on quadcopter motion. A dual-loop control structure is adopted, consisting of an outer position loop and an inner attitude loop, both enhanced with the proposed composite controller. The main innovations include a novel transient tracking differentiator (TTD) based on hyperbolic tangent and arctangent functions to improve tracking performance and signal filtering; an improved extended state observer (ESO) using the Sigmoid-based sfal function for faster and more accurate disturbance estimation; and a phase compensator to reduce system delay and enhance response speed. Simulation results validate that the proposed method achieves more stable and accurate trajectory tracking under wind disturbances. Compared with conventional ADRC under 5 m/s gust, the tracking error is reduced by more than 40%, response speed is increased by approximately 30%, and attitude settling time is shortened by about 40%. Wind disturbance rejection capability is significantly enhanced. The proposed method enables quadcopters to maintain stable and precise flight even in complex high-wind environments.