Vision-based Sliding Mode Control with Exponential Reaching Law for Uncooperative Ground Target Searching and Tracking by Quadcopter

This paper propose a robust approach based on vision and sliding mode controller for searching and tracking an uncooperative and unidentified mobile ground target using a quadcopter UAV (QUAV). The proposed strategy is an Image-Based Visual Servoing (IBVS) approach using target's visual data projected in a virtual camera combined with the information provided by the QUAV's internal sensors. For an effective visual target searching, a circular search trajectory is followed, with a high altitude using the Camera Coverage Area (CCA). A Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) based on Exponential Reaching Law (ERL) is used to ensure the QUAV control in the presence of external disturbances and measurement uncertainties. Simulation results are presented to assess the proposer strategy considering different scenarios.