Design of a quadcopter control system based on adaptive super-twisting sliding mode

To improve the flight stability of quadcopters in interference-prone environments, the under actuated strong coupling and nonlinear characteristics of the system were fully considered, and a dual closed-loop control system based on the adaptive super-twisting sliding mode method was proposed. First, the control system was structured into an outer loop for position control and an inner loop for attitude control, both designed using the super-twisting sliding mode control method, effectively reducing the chattering typically caused by conventional sliding mode control approach. Then, an adaptive disturbance compensation law was introduced to counteract unknown external disturbances, enabling the controller to maintain the stability of the closed-loop system with reduced control gain, thereby further minimizing chattering. Finally, the stability of the proposed control system was theoretically validated using Lyapunov stability theory, and its performance was verified through simulations conducted in MATLAB. The simulation results show that the designed control system offers strong robustness, high control accuracy, and effective trajectory tracking performance while significantly suppressing system chattering.