Output Feedback Control for a Quadrotor Aircraft Using an Adaptive High Gain Observer

This paper addresses the problem of quadrotor control under unknown and time-varying disturbances. It is assumed that such disturbances affect the entire quadrotor’s dynamics, i.e., in attitude and position. To stabilize the quadrotor, we propose an output-feedback control approach, in which we implement a Backstepping control together with an Adaptive High Gain Observer to estimate disturbances. The stability of the closed-loop system is proved via the Lyapunov theory. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the methodology is illustrated through numerical simulations and experiments.