Globally-Attractive Logarithmic Geometric Control of a Quadrotor for Aggressive Trajectory Tracking

We present a new quadrotor geometric control scheme that is capable of tracking highly aggressive trajectories. Unlike previous works, our geometric controller uses the logarithmic map of SO(3) to express rotational error in the Lie algebra, allowing us to treat the manifold in a more effective and natural manner, and can be shown to be globally attractive. We show the performance of our control scheme against highly aggressive trajectories in simulation experiments. Additionally, we present an adaptation of this controller that allows us to interface effectively with the angular rate controllers on an onboard flight control unit and show the ability of this adapted control scheme to track aggressive trajectories on a quadrotor hardware platform.