Discontinuous High-Gain Observer in a Robust Control UAV Quadrotor: Real-Time Application for Watershed Monitoring

A control algorithm that is robust with respect to wind disturbances for a quadrotor UAV attitude dynamics is presented. The proposed approach consists of a high-gain observer based on a discontinuous technique. Such an algorithm is embedded on board the quadrotor. The high-gain observer estimates external disturbances such as wind and parameter uncertainties, and a control algorithm is designed to compensate these undesired effects. The observer design is based on Lyapunov stability theory; simulation results and experiments validate the nonlinear observer performance and robustness of the approach under windy conditions. Also, a photogrammetry survey was carried out to develop Digital Elevation Models in order to experimentally demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. The accuracy of such models was compared and the performance improvement is demonstrated.