Implementation of disturbance rejection control based on the integration of model predictive control and nonlinear disturbance observer for unmanned aerial vehicles

Abstract Resilience to disturbances has been a major focus of research in recent years regarding unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications. This study presents a trajectory‐tracking control system that integrates a nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO) and a model predictive control (MPC). The control architecture consists of inner‐loop attitude control and outer‐loop position control, and the adaptive control primarily addresses uncertainties in the rotational terms of wind disturbances. The goal of NDO is to estimate the total disturbances and translate them into attitude commands to reduce their impact. When the adaptive control law is incorporated into the inner control loop, the influence of wind disturbances on quadrotor UAVs could be reduced. Different types of disturbances that may occur during flights are simulated to validate the performance of the proposed control system. Feasibility and control performance on real‐time embedded hardware have been validated through flight experiments. Both simulation results and the outcomes from these experiments show that the proposed approach, termed NDOMPC control system, could improve robustness and enhance control performance.