Contact force tracking of quadrotors based on robust attitude control

Quadrotors are autonomous aerial vehicles widely developed in the last decade due to their small size, low weight and vertical take off and landing capabilities. Nowadays, some demanding applications involve the quadrotor interacting with rigid objects, requiring stable contact and force tracking. In this paper, an attitude control is proposed to handle force tracking by exploiting the high couplings among force, position and attitude dynamics. The proposed controller enforces a fractional sliding motion in finite-time to guarantee robust force tracking stabilisation in spite of disturbances and dynamical uncertainties. Experiments show additional theoretical and technological features to incorporate this flight mode in applications.