Nonlinear model-based position control for quadrotor UAVs

Position control of Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) is challenging, because position measurements by global navigation satellite systems or laser scanners are typically available at much lower rates than the control frequency. Furthermore, the transient response of classic PID controllers is either slow or induces overshoot. In this work, we address this issue by a model-based control approach. We model and identify the dynamics of the MAV and use this knowledge in a nonlinear cascaded controller to generate time-optimal trajectories. The proposed method is evaluated in simulation and two real MAVs.