Quadrotor-based trajectory tracking control of wind turbine blades: A dual-closed-loop ADRC approach

This paper is concerned with the tracking control problem of a quadrotor for the motion trajectory of wind turbine blades subject to external disturbances. Due to the unpredictability and complexity of the existing disturbances such as gusts and turbulence, a dual closed-loop active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) method, including a position loop and an attitude loop, is proposed to mitigate the effect of external disturbances on the quadrotor’s flight. In particular, an extended state observer (ESO) is first employed to estimate the real-time disturbances. Then, a control law is further designed so as to suppress the impact of disturbances on the wind turbine blades’ trajectories. The convergence analysis of the extended state observer and the stability proof of the system are also presented. Experimental simulations are conducted to show the superiority of the proposed control strategy. In addition, in comparison with the traditional PID-based control method, the proposed dual closed-loop ADRC tracking control scheme demonstrates superior control performance in the presence of external disturbances with high intensity, which confirms the effectiveness of the proposed control architecture.