J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 87:341–362
DOI 10.1007/s10846-016-0441-1
Energy Based 3D Autopilot for VTOL UAV Under
Guidance & Navigation Constraints
Y. Bouzid · H. Siguerdidjane · Y. Bestaoui ·
M. Zareb
Received: 15 June 2016 / Accepted: 31 October 2016 / Published online: 24 November 2016
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
Abstract Motion control design plays a crucial role
in autonomous vehicles. Mainly, these systems oper-
ate in conditions of under-actuation, which make the
control a serious task especially in presence of practi-
cal constraints. The main objective within this paper is
to ensure the tracking of 3D reference trajectory over-
coming some of the issues related to the control of
multi-rotor vehicles (such as underactuation, robust-
ness, limited power, accuracy, overshoot, etc.). There-
fore, a control scheme for Vertical Take Off and Land-
ing (VTOL) multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
(UAV) is designed, applying the Interconnection and
Damping Assignment-Passivity Based Control (IDA-
PBC) technique. As reference model based technique,
the control specifications are readily met by fixing a
desired dynamic model, which is a major advantage
Y. Bouzid () · Y. Bestaoui
IBISC Laboratory, Universite d’Evry Val d’Essonne,
Universite Paris-Saclay, Evry, 91080, France
e-mail: Yasser.Bouzid@ufrst.univ-evry.fr
e-mail: Yasmina.Bestaoui@ufrst.univ-evry.fr
H. Siguerdidjane
L2S Laboratory, Centralesupelec, Universite Paris-Saclay,
Gif sur yvette, 91190, France
e-mail: Houria.Siguerdidjane@centralesupelec.fr
M. Zareb
LEPESA Laboratory, Electronic Department, USTO-MB,
El Mnaouar, 31000, Algeria
e-mail: elmehdizb@gmail.com
of the technique. Moreover, a port−controlled Hamil-
tonian representation is exploited in order to point out
the physical properties of the system such as its inter-
nal energy. This latter is exploited, as a fitness function
for an optimization algorithm, in order to decrease
the consumed energy especially at the take-off step
and allows the tuning of the controller parameters.
The numerical simulations have shown satisfactory
results that support the claims using nominal system
model or disturbed model. The designed controller
has been implemented on a real vehicle for which
one demonstrates, in an indoor area manipulation, the
effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.
Keywords Reference model · IDA-PBC ·
Autonomous UAV · Internal energy · Tracking
control
1 Introduction
In the last decade, multi-rotor helicopters are becom-
ing very popular platforms of research, due to their
capability of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL),
their ability of hovering and the simplicity of their
maintenance and construction. One can find in the
literature, classic control strategies that operate in
particular points and assume linear models whilst
the application of nonlinear control techniques can
improve the performance and may allow complex
maneuvers [1]. This has generated a great interest in
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the control community over the world to develop new
tools to improve the existing techniques [2]. In fact,
the control of the multi-rotor vehicles is a very seri-
ous problem especially in presence of restrictions and
constraints as for instance: the existence of obstacles
in the workspace, the effect of external disturbances,
the absence of measured signals caused by the inter-
ruption of communication or the sensors failure and
the mechanical or power limitations. As a matter of
fact, this latter issue implies to consider a satura-
tion modules in the control architecture. Moreover,
the control laws have to be simpler because of the
computational power limitation of the on board elec-
tronics. Furthermore, a broad range of specifications
is required as the robustness with respect to distur-
bances, the accuracy of the control and the smooth-
ness of the time system response in order to achieve
an efficient control. Therefore, there are many pub-
lished papers dealing with the control of autonomous
systems considering some constraints. In [3] robust
position tracking is proposed without the cumbersome
complexities involved when resolving underactuation.
This robust control is based on a model-free control
technique. In [4] a high performance flight control
approach has been proposed for the quadrotors con-
sidering external disturbances and input delays. The
paper [5] attempts to develop an adaptive control algo-
rithm based on the dynamic inversion method. This
latter is designed using time scale separation in three
loops, which simplify the control design. Pseudo Con-
trol Hedging (PCH) is used to deal with the actuator
saturation nonlinearities and also with the inner-outer-
loop interaction. The online adaptive architecture
employs a neural network that is tuned via an off-line
genetic algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed
method is demonstrated by numerical simulations
considering conventional VTOL helicopter under gust
of wind.
VTOL multi−rotor UAVs allow the development
of advanced manipulation tasks (haptic teleoperation
[6], robot vision [7], flying sensors [8], etc.). These
interactive behaviors may be achieved using additional
tools such as arms [9], flexible or rigid links [10] and
manipulators [11]. New aptitudes may be obtained, as
for instance the vehicle introduced in [12] that allows
both aerial and terrestrial locomotion using a quadro-
tor and a rolling cage. In these new interactive and
complex tasks, additional constraints are considered
making the control more challenging. In fact, damping
J Intell Robot Syst (2017) 87:341–362
and inertial properties play a significant role during
the interactive behavior. This is the reason for why the
development of techniques that explicitly show these
properties is of major impact.
The use of the so−called port−controlled Hamil-
tonian representation, which have a very natural and
intuitive way of representing a dynamic model has
attracted the attention of researchers. Therefore, many
control tools have been developed to deal with this
compact representation (see [13, 14] and the ref-
erences therein). Passivity−Based Control (PBC) is
well known especially in mechanical applications
for controlling nonlinear systems. PBC exploits the
property of passivity to achieve the control objec-
tive by rendering the closed-loop system passive with
respect to a desired storage function and by injecting
damping [15]. An improvement of PBC was devel-
oped in [16] and called Interconnection and Damping
Assignment (IDA). IDA-PBC is a promising nonlinear
state-feedback control approach, which combines the
advantages of PBC and the port−controller Hamilto-
nian framework simultaneously and can be used for
stabilization and tracking control of a wide range of
physical systems. It offers considerable advantages
and features [17]. IDA-PBC has a very natural and
intuitive way of representing a control design prob-
lem and highlights the relationship between various
system characteristics, such as energy storage, dissi-
pation, and interconnection [18]. In other words, using
IDA-PBC, we are able to push any physical system to
behave as another one that is more suitable for a given
objective.
Recently, IDA−PBC has become an efficient tool
in nonlinear control applications (electrical, hydraulic,
chemical and mechanical) and has been illustrated
in several real experimentations including electrical
motors [19], hydraulic actuator [20], robot with par-
allel architecture [21], unmanned underwater vehicle
[22] and rotary inverted pendulum [23]. Indeed for the
UAVs, some papers of energy based control are pub-
lished, one may find for example the work presented
in [24] that uses the formalism of port−Hamiltonian
systems and bond graphs for both the stabilization
and the tracking. In [25] a sub−optimal feedback
control is used to stabilize the quadrotor based on
the passivity property and the dynamic program-
ming. In [26] it is presented a PBC design for
a quadrotor transporting a cable-suspended payload
considering reduced problem (2D transverse plane)