Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

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Applied Mathematics and Computation

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/amc

Event-triggered active disturbance rejection trajectory

tracking control for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle
Lin-Xing Xu a, Yu-Long Wang a,∗, Fei Wang b, Yue Long c
a
School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, PR China
b
TAIHU Laboratory of Deepsea Technological Science, China Ship Scientific Research Center, Wuxi 214082, PR China
c
School of Automation Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper considers the problem of trajectory tracking control for a quadrotor unmanned
Received 19 November 2022 aerial vehicle. In order to suppress the influences of unknown disturbances and model un-
Revised 22 January 2023
certainties, an event-triggered cascade active disturbance rejection trajectory tracking con-
Accepted 3 March 2023
trol scheme is developed for the quadrotor position system. The proposed control scheme
Available online 15 March 2023
can reduce the transmission frequency of sampled data, and suppress the influence of ad-
Keywords: ditional disturbance caused by the event-triggering mechanism. With the proposed control
Unmanned aerial vehicle scheme, the trajectory tracking control of the quadrotor system can be achieved and Zeno
Event-triggering mechanism behavior can be excluded. Moreover, a parameter adaptive adjustment mechanism is intro-
Trajectory tracking control duced to ensure the trajectory tracking performance of the system. Finally, the proposed
Disturbance rejection control control scheme is applied to a quadrotor system to verify its effectiveness, and its ability
to suppress the influences of unknown disturbances is also verified.
© 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

In recent years, quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been widely used in the fields of agricultural mapping
[1], wireless communication [2], and military applications [3] due to their advantages of strong maneuverability, flexible
deployment, and low cost. However, quadrotor UAVs have the characteristics of underactuation, nonlinearity, and strong
coupling, and they are easily affected by the external environment during flight. These characteristics make designing effec-
tive flight control schemes for quadrotor UAVs challenging.
In the past decade, many effective flight control schemes for quadrotor UAVs have been proposed, such as nonlinear
PID control [4], adaptive backstepping control [5], and sliding-mode control [6–8]. In practical applications, quadrotor UAVs
are inevitably affected by some unknown disturbances and model uncertainties, which may degrade the system control
performance. Therefore, it is essential to develop a quadrotor flight control scheme that can actively suppress the influences
of unknown disturbances and model uncertainties. Generally, some model parameters of quadrotor UAVs are difficult to be
obtained accurately, and the flight controller designed by traditional control methods may not achieve the desired control
performance. Recently, with the development of active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) theory [9], some flight control
schemes with the ability to suppress disturbance effects have been proposed [10–19]. In [17], an attitude control method
based on ADRC was designed for a quadrotor UAV by considering the influences of external gust disturbances. In [18],

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: yulongwang@shu.edu.cn (Y.-L. Wang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2023.127967
0 096-30 03/© 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

Fig. 1. Configuration of the quadrotor UAV.

by combining backstepping sliding mode and ADRC methods, a quadrotor robust flight control method was developed. In
[19], a composite disturbance compensation attitude control scheme was proposed to overcome the influences of unknown
disturbances and improve the system’s transient performance. An accurate mathematical model of the system is not required
in the ADRC method, so it is very practical to use it to design the flight control scheme for quadrotor UAVs. This paper will
use the ADRC theory to study the quadrotor trajectory tracking control problem.
On the other hand, it is sometimes unnecessary for a normally flying quadrotor UAV to send every sampled data packet
to the controller. An event-based control method was proposed in [20] to avoid the waste of communication resources
while ensuring satisfactory system control performance. This control scheme releases the sampled signal only when the
preselected event-triggering condition is satisfied. Recently, event-triggered control methods have been used in [21–28] to
design flight control schemes for quadrotor UAVs. In [25], an event-triggered Kalman filtering algorithm was proposed to
ensure that multiple UAVs can track a moving target. In [26], based on an event-triggered super twisting algorithm, an
attitude control method was designed for a quadrotor UAV to ensure the robust stabilization of the system. In [27], an
event-triggered dual-rate control technique was developed for a wireless networked UAV control system. However, unknown
disturbances and model uncertainties were not considered in the above mentioned results. How to design an effective active
disturbance rejection flight control scheme while reducing the transmission frequency of sampled data is a meaningful
research.
In this paper, an event-triggered trajectory tracking control scheme is developed for the quadrotor UAV. In order to
overcome the influences of unknown disturbances and model uncertainties, a cascade ADRC method is employed to design
the flight control scheme. The main advantages of the proposed control scheme are summarized as follows:

• An event-triggering mechanism with dynamic threshold parameters is developed to reduce the transmission frequency
of sampled data. Compared with the fixed threshold event-triggering mechanism, the proposed scheme can provide a
better tradeoff between the data transmission frequency and the system control performance.
• The proposed quadrotor trajectory tracking control scheme can suppress the influences of unknown disturbances and
model uncertainties. In addition, the control deviation caused by the event-triggering mechanism is treated as an addi-
tional disturbance whose effects can be successfully suppressed by the proposed control scheme.
• Unlike the previous ADRC methods in [10–19], an adaptive parameter adjustment mechanism is introduced in the con-
troller design. With this adaptive parameter adjustment mechanism, the quadrotor trajectory tracking error can converge
to the preset tracking error bound.

The remaining part is organized as follows. The quadrotor trajectory tracking control problem is presented in Section II.
In Section III, an event-triggered cascade ADRC scheme is developed for the quadrotor position system. In Section IV, a
quadrotor UAV example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. Finally, Section V concludes
the paper.

2. Problem Formulation

The event-triggered quadrotor UAV trajectory tracking control problem is formulated in this section.

2.1. Modeling of the quadrotor UAV

The configuration of the quadrotor UAV is shown in Fig. 1. Two coordinate systems (body-fixed frame and earth-fixed
frame) are introduced to establish the mathematical model of the quadrotor UAV.

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

Fig. 2. Block diagram of the designed control scheme.

In the body-fixed frame, the quadrotor attitude is defined as A = [φ , ψ , ϕ ]T , where φ , ψ and ϕ represent the three
attitude angles. According to [18], the rotation matrix between two coordinate systems can be given as
 
Cψ Cϕ Sψ Sφ Cϕ − Cφ Sϕ Sψ Cφ Cϕ + Sφ Sϕ
Rt = Cψ Sϕ Sψ Sφ Sϕ + Cφ Cϕ Sψ Cφ Sϕ − Sφ Cϕ , (1)
−Sψ Cψ Sφ Cψ Cφ
where C(· ) and S(· ) represent cos(· ) and sin(· ), respectively.
In the earth-fixed frame, the quadrotor position is given as P = [x, y, z]T . According to [18], the position dynamic equa-
tions can be modeled as
       
ẍ 0 0 cx x˙
1
ÿ = Rt 0 + 0 − cy y˙ , (2)
m
z̈ Us −g cz z˙
where Us = l (21 + 22 + 23 + 24 )/m, and m is the quadrotor mass; l is the lift coefficient; 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 are the rotary
speeds of rotors; g is the acceleration of gravity; and cx , cy , cz are the air drag coefficients.
We define χ1,1 = x, χ1,2 = x˙ , χ2,1 = y, χ2,2 = y˙ , χ3,1 = z, and χ3,2 = z˙ . From (1) and (2), the following position dynamic
system can be derived

χ˙ i,1 = χi,2 + wi,1
(3)
χ˙ i,2 = ui + fi (χi,2 ) + wi,2 , i = 1, 2, 3,
where χi = [χi,1 , χi,2 ]T is the system state; wi, j ( j = 1, 2 ) represent some unknown time-varying disturbances; ui is the
control input, and

u1 = (Sψ Cφ Cϕ + Sφ Sϕ )Us , f1 (χ1,2 ) = − cmx χ1,2 ,

c
u2 = (Sψ Cφ Sϕ − Sφ Cϕ )Us , f2 (χ2,2 ) = − my χ2,2 ,

u3 = Cψ Cφ Us − g, f3 (χ3,2 ) = − cmz χ3,2 .

In practical applications, the unknown disturbances wi, j are bounded and satisfy the following assumption.

Assumption 1. The unknown disturbances wi, j satisfy |w˙ i, j | ≤ w̄0 , where w̄0 is an unknown positive constant.

This paper mainly considers the quadrotor UAV’s position trajectory tracking control problem. To suppress the influ-
ences of unknown disturbances and model uncertainties, an event-triggered cascade ADRC method is employed in the flight
controller design. Fig. 2 shows the control block diagram of the designed control scheme, where ri represents the desired
trajectory; h̄i is a pseudo-control variable; ζi and ηi are event-triggered position signals.

2.2. Fuzzy Logic Systems

In practical applications, some model parameters of quadrotor UAVs may not be obtained accurately. To avoid using these
model parameters in the controller design, a fuzzy logic system (FLS) is introduced to approximate the function fi (χi,2 ). The
inference rules in the fuzzy rule base are defined as Rs : if x1 is Fs1 · · · and xn is Fsn , then y is Gs (s = 1, · · · , N ), where Fsl
(l = 1, · · · , n ) and Gs are fuzzy sets.
Then, according to [30], the following FLS can be obtained
N 
s=1ȳs nh=1 μFsh (xh )
y ( x ) = N n , (4)
s=1 [ h=1 μFh (xh )]
s

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

where ȳs = maxy∈R μGs (y ); μFs (xh ) and μGs (y ) are fuzzy membership functions.
h
According to [29], the fuzzy basis function is defined as
n
h=1 Fh xh μ s( )
s (x ) = N n . (5)
s=1 [ h=1 Fh
s μ ( x h )]
Define T =[ 1, · · · , N] = [ȳ1 , · · · , ȳN ] and (x ) = [ 1 ( x ), · · · , N ( x )]
T, the FLS (4) satisfies the following formula

y (x ) = T
( x ). (6)
Lemma 1. [30]. Consider an unknown continuous function f (x ) defined on a compact set S. The following inequality is satisfied

 
sup  f (x ) − T
(x ) ≤ δ, (7)
x∈S

where is the weight vector and δ is any positive constant.

According to Lemma 1, the function fi (χi,2 ) in (3) can be approximated as

fi (χi,2 ) = ∗T
i i (χi,2 ) + δi (χi,2 ), (8)

where ∗i is the optimal weight vector; δi (χi,2 ) is the approximate error and satisfies |δi (χi,2 )| ≤ δ̄i with δ̄i is an unknown
positive constant. Moreover, the fuzzy basis function i (· ) satisfies local Lipschitz condition [31].

3. Active Disturbance Rejection Trajectory Tracking Control of the Quadrotor UAV

This section presents an event-triggered disturbance rejection trajectory tracking control scheme for the quadrotor UAV.

3.1. Event-triggered cascade ADRC scheme

In what follows, an event-triggered cascade ADRC scheme will be designed. Define h̄i = χi,2 as a pseudo-control variable.
Then, according to equation (8), the quadrotor system (3) can be rewritten as follows

subsystem Si,1 : χ˙ i,1 = h̄i + wi,1 , (9)

subsystem Si,2 : χ˙ i,2 = ui + ∗T

i i (χi,2 ) + δi (χi,2 ) + wi,2 . (10)
Once the pseudo-control variable h̄i is determined, it can be regarded as the desired trajectory for subsystem Si,2 . The
controller design consists of two steps:
Step 1: For subsystem Si,1 , define αi,1 = χi,1 − ri . It can be obtained from (9) that

α˙ i,1 = h̄i + wi,1 − r˙ i . (11)

Treating wi,1 as an extended state variable αi,2 , it follows that

α˙ i,1 = i + αi,2 − r˙ i
(12)
α˙ i,2 = w˙ i,1 .
Next, the following extended state observer is introduced
˙
αˆ i,1 = i + αˆ i,2 − r˙ i + i,1 ( σi )
(13)
αˆ˙ i,2 = τi i,2 (σi ),
where αˆ i = [αˆ i,1 , αˆ i,2 ]T is the estimated state; and τi ≥ 1 is a dynamic adaptive parameter which will be defined later.
The functions i,1 (σi ) and i,2 (σi ) are chosen as

i,1 (σi ) = di,1 σi , i,2 (σi ) = di,2 σi , (14)


−di,1 1
where the parameters di,1 and di,2 are chosen such that Di = is a Hurwitz matrix. Moreover, σi is defined as
−di,2 0
σi = τi (ζi − αˆ i,1 ), and ζi is an event-triggered signal which is given as
ζi (t ) = αi,1 (ti,k1i ), ∀t ∈ [ti,k1i , ti,k1i +1 ), (15)
k k +1
where ti,1i (ki ∈ N+ ) is the ki th transmission instant of the position-loop. The next transmission instant ti,1i is defined as
   

ti,k1i +1 = in f t > ti,k1i  α  
i,1 +
α 
i,2 ≥ i,1 τi
−1
, (16)

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

where ˜ i,αj = i, j (σi ) − i, j (α˜ i,1 ) ( j = 1, 2 ) and α˜ i,1 = τi (αi,1 − αˆ i,1 ); and i,1 is a positive parameter.
Then, the pseudo-control variable h̄i is designed as
h̄i = −κi,1 τi αˆ i,1 − αˆ i,2 + r˙ i , (17)
where κi,1 is a positive parameter.
Step 2: For subsystem Si,2 , define βi,1 = χi,2 − h̄i . It can be obtained from (10) that

β˙ i,1 = ui + ∗T
i i (χi,2 ) + δi (χi,2 ) + wi,2 − h̄˙ i . (18)
Treating δi (χi,2 ) + wi,2 as an extended state variable βi,2 , it follows that
˙
βi,1 = ui + ∗T i i (χi,2 ) + βi,2 − ˙ i
(19)
βi,2 = δi (χi,2 ) + w˙ i,2 .
˙ ˙

Next, the following extended state observer is introduced

 
βˆ˙ i,1 = ui + ˆ Ti i χˆ i,2 + βˆi,2 − ˙ i + i,1 ( ρi )
(20)
βˆ˙ i,2 = τi i,2 (ρi ),
where βˆi = [βˆi,1 , βˆi,2 ]T is the estimated state; χˆ i,2 = h̄i + βˆi,1 is the estimation of χi,2 ; and ρi is defined as ρi = τi (ηi − βˆi,1 ).
ηi is an event-triggered signal which is given as
ηi = βi,1 (ti,i2 ), ∀t ∈ [ti,i2 , ti,i2+1 ), (21)
  +1
where ti,i2 (i ∈ N+ ) is the i th transmission instant of the velocity-loop. The next transmission instant ti,i2 is defined as
     
ti,i2+1 = in f t > ti,i2  α  
i,1 +
α 
i,2 ≥ i,2 τ
−1
, i
(22)
β
i, j (ρi ) i, j (βi,1 ) ( j = 1, 2 ) and β˜i,1 = τi (βi,1 − βˆi,1 ); and i,2 is a positive parameter.
where ˜ i, j = − ˜
Moreover, ˆ i is the estimation of i, and it is designed as

ˆ˙ i = 2γi [τ −1 βˆi,1 i (χˆ i,2 ) − λi ˆ i ], (23)

i

where γi and λi are positive parameters.

Then, the controller ui is designed as

ui = −κi,2 τi βˆi,1 − βˆi,2 − ˆ Ti i (χˆ i,2 ) + h̄˙ i , (24)

where κi,2 is a positive design parameter.

Remark 1. Different from the ADRC scheme in [18], the FLS is introduced to approximate the nonlinear function in the
quadrotor UAV system. The proposed control scheme can avoid using quadrotor model parameters in the controller design.
In addition, the control deviation caused by the event-triggering mechanism can be regarded as an additional disturbance,
which can also be suppressed by the proposed ADRC scheme.

Remark 2. The event-triggering mechanisms (16) and (22) can be dynamically adjusted according to the adaptive parameter
τi . If τi converges to a positive constant, the proposed scheme will become a fixed threshold event-triggering mechanism.
Therefore, the proposed scheme can provide a better tradeoff between the data transmission frequency and the system
control performance.

The dynamic adaptive parameter τi is updated as follows

τ˙ i = i τi Hi , (25a)
⎧
⎨ 1, i  ≥ ai ;
Hi =  0,  i  ≤ bi ; (25b)
⎩1 − cos2 π sin2 π i  −bi
2 2
, otherwise,
2 2 a2i −b2i

where τi (0 ) ≥ 1; i = [αˆ i,1 , ζi , βˆi,1 , ηi ]T ; i , ai and bi are positive parameters.

Remark 3. Note that τ˙ i ≥ 0 is continuous and τi is monotonically increasing until the condition i  ≤ bi is satisfied. If
the dynamic adaptive parameter τi → τssi ∈ R+ as t → +∞, where R+ stands for the set of positive real numbers. Accord-
ing to the parameter update mechanism (25), one can get that i  ≤ bi as t → +∞, which implies the boundedness
of αˆ i,1 , ζi , βˆi,1 , ηi , τi . Together with the event-triggering mechanisms (16) and (22), it is known that αi,1 and βi,1 are also
bounded, which means the boundedness of χi,1 , χi,2 , χˆ i,2 , and ˆ i . At this time, by adjusting the parameter bi , the quadrotor
trajectory tracking error can converge to a preset tracking error bound.

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

3.2. Main results

Next, we will present the main results of this paper. First, define α˜ i,2 = αi,2 − αˆ i,2 and β˜i,2 = βi,2 − βˆi,2 . Then, from (12),
(13), (19), and (20), the following error systems can be obtained
˙  α

α˜ i,1 = i Hi α˜ i,1 + τi α˜ i,2 − i,1 (α˜ i,1 ) −
  i,1
(26)
α˜˙ i,2 = α˙ i,2 − τi i,2 (α˜ i,1 ) + i,α2 ,
⎧      
⎨β˜˙ i,1 = i Hi β˜i,1 + τi β˜i,2 − i,1 β˜i,1 − β
+ T
i χˆ i,2 + τi f˜i
    i,1 i
(27)
⎩β˜˙ i,2 = β˙ i,2 − τi i,2 β˜i,1 + β ,
i,2

where α˜ i = [α˜ i,1 , α˜ i,2 ]T and β˜i = [β˜i,1 , β˜i,2 ]T represent the observation errors; the estimation error ˜ i = τi ( ∗
i
− ˆ i ); and
f˜i = ∗T i (χi,2 ) − i (χ
ˆ i,2 ).
∗T
i i

Theorem 1. Consider the position dynamic system in (3), the extended state observers (13) and (20), the event-triggering mecha-
nisms (16) and (22), and the adaptive laws (23) and (25). Then, the flight controller (24) can ensure that all states of the quadrotor
position system are bounded. Moreover, the quadrotor trajectory tracking error can converge to the preset tracking error bound
by adjusting the design parameter bi .

P roo f : Define a function Qi (νi ) : R2 → R as

Qi (νi ) = νiT Qi νi , (28)
where the positive definite matrix Qi satisfies Qi Di + DTi Qi = −I.
Consider the Lyapunov function
1 ˜T ˜
Vi (t ) =αi,T1 αi,1 + βi,T1 βi,1 + Qi (α˜ i ) + Qi (β˜i ) + i. (29)
2γi τi i
Then, the time derivative of (29) satisfies the following inequality
   
∂ Qi (α˜ i ) ˙ ∂ Qi (α˜ i ) ˙ ∂ Qi β˜i ˙ ∂ Qi β˜i ˙ 1 ˙ − τ˙ i
V˙ i (t ) = 2αi,1 α˙ i,1 + 2βi,1 β˙ i,1 + α˜ + α˜ + β i,1 +
˜ β˜ i,2 + T T
∂ α˜ i,1 i,1 ∂ α˜ i,2 i,2 ∂ βi,1
˜ ∂ βi,2
˜ γi τi
i i
2γi τi2 i i

     
≤ −2κi,1 τi αi,21 + 2αi,1 (κi,1 α˜ i,1 + α˜ i,2 ) − 2κi,2 τi βi,21 + 2βi,1 κi,2 β˜i,1 + β˜i,2 + 2βi,1 τi −1 Ti i χˆ i,2 + f˜i
∂ Qi (α˜ i )  
∂ Qi (α˜ i )
α ∂ Qi (α˜ i )  α

+ τi α˜ i,2 − (α˜ i,1 ) −  H α˜ +
+ α˙ i,2 − τi i,2 (α˜ i,1 ) − τi
∂ α˜ i,1 i,1
∂ α˜ i,1 i i i,1
i,1
∂ α˜ i,2 i,2

   ∂ Qi β˜i  
∂ Qi β˜i    β   
+ τi β˜i,2 − i,1 βi,1 − i,1 +
˜ i Hi β˜i,1 + Ti i χˆ i,2 + τi fi
∂ β˜i,1 ∂ βi,1
˜
 
∂ Qi βi    β
 1 T ˆ˙ i Hi T
+ β˙ i,2 − τi i,2 βi,1 − τi i,2 − + . (30)
∂ βi,2 γi i i γi τi i i
According to the work in [18], a function i (· ) : R2 → R can be founded such that
ε 1  νi  2 ≤ Q i ( νi ) ≤ ε 2  νi  2 , (31)

ε 3  ν i  2 ≤ i ( ν i ) ≤ ε 4  ν i  2 , (32)

∂ Q i ( νi ) 
2
∂ Q i ( νi )
νi,2 − (ν ) ≤ −i (νi ), (33)
∂νi,1 ∂νi, j i, j i,1
  j=1
 ∂ Qi (νi ) 
 
 ∂νi, j  ≤ ε5 ||νi ||, j = 1, 2, (34)

where εl (l = 1, · · · , 5 ) are some positive constants.

Applying Young’s inequality yields
2αi,1 (κi,1 α˜ i,1 + α˜ i,2 ) ≤ (1 + κi,1 )(αi,21 + α˜ i 2 ), (35)

2βi,1 (κi,2 β˜i,1 + β˜i,2 ) ≤ (1 + κi,2 )(βi,21 + β˜i 2 ). (36)

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

From (33) and (34), and the fact that 0 ≤ Hi ≤ 1, it can be proved that

∂ Qi (α˜ i ) 2
∂ Qi (α˜ i )
τi [ α˜ i,2 − (α˜ i,1 )] ≤ −τi i (α˜ i ) ≤ −ε3 τi α˜ i 2 , (37)
∂ α˜ i,1 j=1
∂ α˜ i, j i, j

∂ Qi (β˜i ) ˜ 2
∂ Qi (β˜i )
τi [ βi,2 − i, j (β˜i,1 )] ≤ −τi i (β˜i ) ≤ −ε3 τi β˜i 2 , (38)
∂ βi,1
˜
j=1 ∂ β˜i, j
∂ Qi (α˜ i )
 H α˜ ≤ i ε5 ||α˜ i |||α˜ i,1 | ≤ i ε5 ||α˜ i ||2 , (39)
∂ α˜ i,1 i i i,1
 
∂ Qi β˜i     2
i Hi β˜i,1 ≤ i ε5 β˜i β˜i,1  ≤ i ε5 β˜i  . (40)
∂ βi,1
˜

From Assumption 1 and |δi (χi,2 )| ≤ δ̄i , one has

 
 ∂ Qi (α˜ i )  1 2 2
 
 ∂ α˜ i,2 |α˙ i,2 | ≤ ε5 ||α˜ i |||w˙ i,1 | ≤ ||α˜ i || + 4 ε5 w0 ,
2
(41)
 
 ∂ Q β˜        2 1
 i i  ˙ 
 ˜  βi,2 ≤ ε5 β˜i δ˙ i (χi,2 ) + w˙ i,2  ≤ β˜i  + 4 ε52 wδ ,
2
(42)
 ∂ βi,2 
where w̄δ is an unknown positive constant.
According to the event-triggering mechanisms (16) and (22), it can be obtained that


2
∂ Qi (α˜ i ) 
2
1
τi α α
− i, j ≤ τi ε5 ||α
˜ i || | | ≤ ||α˜ i ||2 + ε52 i,21 , (43)
j=1
∂ α˜ i, j j=1
i, j
4
  2    2
2
∂ Qi β˜i       ˜  1
≤ τi ε5 β˜i 
β β
− τi   ≤ βi + 4 ε52 i,22 . (44)
j=1 ∂ β˜i, j i, j
j=1
i, j

Since i (· ) satisfies local Lipschitz condition and τi ≥ 1, the following inequalities can be obtained
      
 ∗T
χˆ i,2  ≤  ∗i  i (χi,2 ) − i χˆ i,2 
(χi,2 ) − ∗T
i i i i
 
≤ ci  ∗i |χi,2 − χˆ i,2 |
  
 (45)
≤ ci  ∗i βi,1 − βˆi,1 
  
≤ ci  ∗i β˜i,1 ,
  
∂ Q (β˜ )  ∂ Q (β˜ )   
2βi,1 f˜i + τi i ˜ i f˜i ≤ 2|βi,1 | + τi  i ˜ i   f˜i 
∂ βi,1 ∂ βi,1
     
≤ 2|βi,1 | + ε5 βi  ci  ∗i β˜i,1 
 ˜ (46)
    2
≤ ci  ∗i βi,21 + ci (1 + ε5 ) ∗i β˜i  ,

where ci is an unknown positive constant.

Moreover, it follows from the fact Ti (χˆ i,2 ) i (χ
ˆ i,2 ) ≤ 1 that
  
∂ Qi β˜i   1    
2βi,1 τi −1 + T
χˆ i,2 − T ˆ˙ i ≤ 2|β˜i,1  T
χˆ i,2 | + ε5 β˜i | T
χˆ i,2 | + 2λi T ˆi
∂ β˜i,1
i i
γi i i i i i i

   5

≤ 1 + ε52 β˜i 2 − λi − T
i i + ∗T
i
∗
i. (47)
4

Combining (30)-(47), and choosing λi > γi + 54 , one has
i

V˙ i ≤ − i,1 αi,21 − i,2 βi,21 − i,3 α˜ i 2 − i,4 β˜i 2 − i,5 ˜ Ti ˜ i + i , (48)
where

i,1 = 2κi,1 τi − 1 − κi,1 , i,2 = 2κi,2 τi − 1 − κi,2 − ci  ∗ ,

i

i,3 = ε3 τi − 3 − κi,1 − i ε5 ,

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

Table 1
Quadrotor UAV parameters

Parameter Value Parameter Value

m 2.5 kg g 9.8 m/s2

l 0.225 m cx,y,z 0.01 N·s/m

i,4 = ε3 τi − 4 − κi,2 − i ε5 − ε52 − ci (1 + ε5 ) ∗ ,

i

i
i,5 = λi − 5
γi − 4 , i = 14 ε52 (w̄20 + w̄2δ + i,21 + i,22 ) + ∗T
i
∗.
i

Note that for a sufficiently large constant τi∗ , the relationships ∗i, j = i, j  > 0 ( j = 1, · · · , 4 ) satisfy.
τi =τi∗
In what follows, it is shown that the dynamic parameter τi → τssi ∈ R+
as t → +∞. Seeking a contradiction, suppose that
τi → +∞. There is a finite time t1 such that τi ≥ τi∗ for t > t1 . Then, one has
V˙ i ≤ −ςiVi + i , t > t1 , (49)
where ςi is a constant satisfying
∗i,3 ∗i,4
ςi = min{∗i,1 , ∗i,2 , λ ,
λmax (Q˜i )
, 2γi τi∗ i,5 }.
max (Q˜i )

It follows from (49) that

i i −ςi t
0 ≤ Vi (t ) ≤ + [Vi (0 ) − ]e , t > t1 . (50)
ςi ςi
As a result
i
lim Vi (t ) ≤ . (51)
t→+∞ ςi
Note that ςi can be increased by increasing τi∗ . It can be seen from (51) that αi,1 , βi,1 , α˜ i , β˜i , and ˜ i can converge to
any small set by increasing ςi . Thus, there is a finite time t2 (t2 > t1 ) such that i  ≤ bi for all t > t2 , and the dynamic
parameter τi will no longer be updated — a contradiction yields.
Therefore, τi → τssi ∈ R+ and i  ≤ bi as t → +∞. Then, from Remark 3, one can get that all states in the system are
bounded. Moreover, by adjusting the parameter bi , the quadrotor trajectory tracking error can converge to the preset tracking
error bound.
k +1
Now, we show that the proposed control scheme can avoid Zeno-behavior. In the position-loop, we show that ti,1i −
k k +1 k
ti,1i ≥ ti∗ , where ti∗ is a positive constant. By defining Ti (t ) = ζi (t ) − αi,1 (t ), ∀t ∈ [ti,1i , ti,1i ), it can be obtained that

d d
|Ti (t )| = (Ti (t )T Ti (t )) 2 = sign(Ti (t ))T˙ i (t ) ≤ |α˙ i,1 (t )|.
1
(52)
dt dt
From (12) and (17), one can get that
α˙ i,1 = −κi,1 τi αˆ i,1 − αˆ i,2 + wi,1 . (53)
k
Since τi , αˆ i,1 , αˆ i,2 , and wi,1 are bounded. Therefore, there exist a positive constant pi such that |α˙ i,1 | ≤ pi . Note that Ti (ti,1i ) =
i,1 i,1
0 and lim k +1 |Ti (t )| = (di,1 +di,2 )τi2
, it can be obtained that ti∗ ≥
(di,1 +di,2 )τi2 pi
. Therefore, the Zeno-behavior can be avoided.
t →ti,i1
Similarly, Zeno-behavior will not occur in the velocity-loop. This completes the proof.

Remark 4. The proposed flight control scheme can effectively reduce the transmission frequency of sampled data and sup-
press the influence of unknown disturbances. In addition, by adjusting only one design parameter bi , the quadrotor trajectory
tracking error can converge to the preset tracking error bound.

4. An Illustrative Example

In this section, the application of the proposed control scheme in the quadrotor UAV flight is presented. The parameters
of the quadrotor UAV are borrowed from [18] and shown in Table 1.
The initial quadrotor position in the earth-fixed frame is set as [x, y, z] = [0, 0, 0]. The initial conditions of the observer
and the adaptive law are set as αˆ i, j (0 ) = βˆi, j (0 ) = 0, ˆ i (0 ) = 0, and τi (0 ) = 1 (i = 1, 2, 3; j = 1, 2 ). The selection of controller
parameters is shown in Table 2. The fuzzy membership function and fuzzy basis function are chosen as
(χˆ i,2 +4−s )2 7
μFs (χˆ i,2 ) =exp[− 10 ], i,s (χ
ˆ i,2 ) = μF s / s=1 μF s , s = 1 , · · · , 7 .
1 1 1

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

Table 2
Controller parameters

di, j = 4 κi, j = 0.3 1, j = 0.02 2, j = 0.1

3, j = 0.02 ai = 0.1 bi = 0.05 i = 1
γi = 1 λi = 5 - -

Fig. 3. Quadrotor UAV flight trajectory.

Fig. 4. The trajectories of αi,1 and ωi, j .

Moreover, the desired flight trajectory is specified as

[x(t ), y(t ), z(t )] = [sin(t ), cos(t ), 0.5t].

The considered unknown time-varying disturbances are described as

wi,1 (t ) = 0.1 sin2 (t ) + 0.1 sin(t ) cos(t )

wi,2 (t ) = 0.1 cos2 (t ) + 0.1 sin(t ), 15s < t < 25s.

By using the event-triggered extended state observers (13) and (20), and the adaptive controller (24), the desired tra-
jectory and the quadrotor UAV flight trajectory are shown in Fig. 3. One can see that the proposed flight control scheme

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

Fig. 5. The trajectories of αˆ i,2 , βˆi,2 , wi,1 , and wi,2 .

Fig. 6. The trajectories of τi .

Fig. 7. The trajectories of ui .

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

Fig. 8. Triggering instants.

Fig. 9. The trajectories of αi,1 and ωi, j .

can ensure the quadrotor UAV to achieve good trajectory tracking. Fig. 4 shows the curves of the quadrotor position trajec-
tory tracking errors. When the disturbances are added to the system, the position trajectory tracking errors will suddenly
increase. It can be seen from Fig. 4 that the influences of time-varying disturbances can be effectively suppressed under the
proposed ADRC scheme. Fig. 5 shows the state curves of the extended state observers. Figs. 6 and 7 show the curves of the
adaptive parameter τi and the control input ui , respectively. From Figs. 5-7, one can see that the extended state observers
can effectively estimate the unknown disturbances, and the adaptive parameters τi converge to positive constant values.
In addition, the triggering instants of the event-triggering mechanism are shown in Fig. 8. The proposed event-triggering
mechanism can reduce the data transmission by more than 95% compared to the continuous sampling method. As can
be seen from Fig. 8, due to the introduction of time-varying disturbances, the frequency of event-triggering is particularly
intensive between 15s and 25s. The increase of event-triggering frequency can improve the control performance of the
system. In the absence of disturbances, the frequency of event-triggering decreases to reduce the transmission of sampled
data. From Figs. 3-8, it is observed that the proposed quadrotor flight control scheme is robust to unknown time-varying
disturbances and can effectively reduce the transmission frequency of sampled data while ensuring the trajectory tracking
performance of the quadrotor system.

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L.-X. Xu, Y.-L. Wang, F. Wang et al. Applied Mathematics and Computation 449 (2023) 127967

Next, parameter bi is adjusted to be 0.005, while the other parameters and unknown time-varying disturbances are the
same as the ones presented above. Applying the proposed control scheme, the curves of the quadrotor position trajectory
tracking errors are shown in Fig. 9. From Fig. 4 and Fig. 9, it can be seen that the quadrotor trajectory tracking error can
converge to the preset error bound by adjusting the design parameter bi .

5. Conclusion

In this paper, the position trajectory tracking control problem has been considered for the quadrotor system with un-
known time-varying disturbances. An event-triggering mechanism has been developed to reduce the transmission frequency
of sampled data. In addition, a cascade ADRC scheme has been proposed to suppress the influences of unknown time-varying
disturbances and the additional disturbance caused by the event-triggering mechanism. The proposed flight control scheme
can ensure the quadrotor UAV to track the desired trajectory. An example has been presented to illustrate the proposed con-
trol scheme. Our future work includes formation tracking control of quadrotor UAV swarms under unknown time-varying
disturbances.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

Acknowledgment

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62103251, 61873335, 61833011);
the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2021M702075); the Project of Science and Technology Commission of
Shanghai Municipality, China (Grant Nos. 20ZR142020 0, 21SQBS0160 0, 22JC140140 0, 2119078030 0, 1951075030 0); and the
111 Project, China (Grant No. D18003).

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