| Abstract: | This paper addresses the robust and accurate trajectory tracking problem for unmanned helicopters in the presence of model uncertainties and external disturbances. First, the helicopter's model is simplified to a six‐degrees‐of‐freedom rigid body augmented with a simplified rotor dynamic model, with the model uncertainties and the external disturbances being treated as lumped unknown disturbances. Second, a nonlinear disturbance observer is designed to estimate this lumped disturbance. Then, a backstepping controller with disturbance compensation is designed to ensure robust and highly trajectory tracking. After that, the theoretical analysis of the efficiency of the designed disturbance observer‐based backstepping controller (Backstepping+DO) is shown by the Lyapunov theory. Finally, simulation results and conclusions are presented and discussed. |
