Velocity-Free Attitude Control of Quadrotors: A Nonlinear Negative Imaginary Approach

In this paper, we propose a new approach to the attitude control of quadrotors, by which angular velocity measurements or a model-based observer reconstructing the angular velocity are not needed. The proposed approach is based on recent stability results obtained for nonlinear negative imaginary systems. In specific, through an inner-outer loop method, we establish the nonlinear negative imaginary property of the quadrotor rotational subsystem. Then, a strictly negative imaginary controller is synthesized using the nonlinear negative imaginary results. This guarantees the robust asymptotic stability of the attitude of the quadrotor in the face of modeling uncertainties and external disturbances. First simulation results underline the effectiveness of the proposed attitude control approach are presented.