Filter-assisted active disturbance rejection control for robust attitude tracking control in the presence of measurement noise

Active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) is a powerful control method for complex systems, demonstrating exceptional robustness against uncertainties and disturbances. Nevertheless, its observer-based framework exhibits inherent sensitivity to measurement noise, which may lead to amplified high-frequency noise components in the control signal. In view of this, this article develops a noise-reduction filter-assisted active disturbance rejection controller (NRFADRC), ensuring high-accuracy attitude tracking control. Firstly, NRFADRC utilizes a novel continuously differentiable function with saturation constraints to design the nonlinear feedback controller and the extended state observer (ESO), mitigating chattering phenomena near switching points. Subsequently, a noise-reduction filter with phase-leading compensation is deployed upstream of ESO, improving the ESO’s state and disturbance estimation accuracy under noisy conditions. Moreover, an innovative Harris hawk optimization algorithm with balanced exploration-exploitation dynamics is developed to optimize the controller parameters. Herein, EHHO introduces the elite guidance-based exploration strategy, the population diversity-based adaptive transition mechanism, and the dynamic Levy flight-based exploitation strategy. Eventually, NRFADRC-based pitch attitude controller is designed, and extensive numerical simulations are conducted. The results demonstrate that the NRFADRC-based controller can realize robust and stable control performance even with control input noise, sensor measurement noise, and atmospheric turbulence.