Back-stepping Prescribed-Time Sliding Mode Control of a Quadrotor UAV

This paper introduces a novel approach that integrates a Back-stepping Prescribed-Time Control (PTC) framework combined with Sliding Mode Control (SMC) to achieve trajectory tracking of a quadrotor in a user-defined preset time. The proposed control strategy not only achieves precise trajectory tracking but showcases resilience to variations in initial conditions and different preset times. The results obtained from simulations depicted the efficiency of the proposed control strategy in trajectory tracking of both rotational and transnational subsystem of the drone. Furthermore, the superior performance of the proposed control over a traditional PID control has been investigated, depicting notable overshoot reductions in control signals.