Lateral Control For UAVs Using Sliding Mode Technique

Preprints of the 18th IFAC World Congress
Milano (Italy) August 28 - September 2, 2011
Lateral Control for UAVs using Sliding Mode Technique

M. Zamurad Shah*, R. Samar**, A.I. Bhatti**
* Mohammad Ali Jinnah University, Islamabad, Pakistan,

(Ph.D. Student, email: pe083005@maju.edu.pk)
** Mohammad Ali Jinnah University, Islamabad, Pakistan
Abstract: This paper presents sliding mode based lateral control for UAVs using a nonlinear sliding
approach. The control is shown to perform well in different flight conditions including straight and turning
flight and can recover gracefully from large track errors. Saturation constraints on the control input are met
through the nonlinear sliding surface, while maintaining high performance for small track errors. Stability
of the nonlinear sliding surface is proved using an appropriate Lyapunov function. The main contribution
of this work is to develop a robust lateral control scheme that uses readily available sensor information and
keeps the track error as small as possible without violating control constraints. In the proposed scheme the
only information used in the control law is the lateral track error and the heading error angle. No
information is required about the desired path/mission, which therefore can be changed online during runtime. This scheme is implemented on a high fidelity nonlinear 6-degrees-of-freedom (6-dof) simulation
and different scenarios are simulated with large and small track errors in windy and calm conditions.
Simulation results illustrate the robustness of the proposed scheme for straight and turning flight, in the
presence of disturbances, both for large and small track errors. Furthermore it is shown that the saturation
limits of the control input are not exceeded in all cases.
1. INTRODUCTION
Two approaches are used for trajectory tracking of UAVs. In
first approach, UAV guidance and control problem is
separated into an outer guidance and an inner control loop.
Based on lateral track error and heading angle, outer
guidance loop generates a desired reference bank (roll) angle
and inner control law generates command to control surface
to follow the desired reference bank angle. In the second
approach, guidance and control laws are designed together in
a single framework.
In most applications, the separate inner and outer loop
approach is commonly used since it is simpler and wellestablished design methods are available for inner loop
vehicle control. For outer guidance loop, different approaches
have been used in the past. Linear proportional and derivative
(PD) control (Siouris, 2004; Pappoullias, 1994) has been used
in many UAV applications. But during curved path following
in the present of a persistent disturbance (e.g. wind),
performance of PD control degrades. A nonlinear scheme has
been given by (Park, 2004; Park, 2007) showing improved
performance than PD scheme. But in the case of large track
error, control output of this nonlinear scheme saturates and
there is no stability proof during control saturation. A
conventional linear proportional and derivative lateral control
with some non-linear modifications has been given by
(Samar, 2007) which enhance the tracking performance. But
the control proposed by (Samar, 2007) is an ad-hoc solution
and as such no stability proof exists. In literature, other
different approaches have been proposed by (Nelson, 2006;
Regina 2009; Jia, 2010; Shtessel, 2009).
Copyright by the
International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC)
Sliding mode control is a technique derived from variable

structure control. Ideal sliding mode control is insensitive to
parameter variations and external disturbances, regardless of
nonlinearity and uncertainty (Bandyopadhyay, 2009). For a
certain class of systems, sliding mode controller design
provides a systematic approach to the problem and guarantee
system insensitivity with respect to the matched disturbance
and model uncertainty. The controller so designed is unique
since the performance of the controller depends on the design
of sliding surface and not the states tracking directly [Slotine,
1991]. Idea is to force the trajectory states towards the sliding
surface and once achieved, the states are constrained to
remain on the surface. Although the technique has good
robustness properties, pure sliding mode control presents
drawbacks that include large control requirements and
chattering. Chattering may be settled by smoothing the
control input using boundary layer or bandwidth limited
sliding mode control. Saturations and sigmoid functions are
used, for example as filters for the output of a
discontinuous signal in order to obtain a continuous one that
is realizable by mechanical hardware.
In this work, the approach used is to divide the UAV
guidance and control problem into an outer guidance and an
inner control loop (Fig. 1). Here, it is assumed that a fast
inner control law is already designed that can track the
desired (reference) roll angle command with minimal
overshoot. A Sliding mode based outer guidance loop is
proposed here in this paper for robust tracking. Main concern
here is the robustness and performance with minimum
information. The only inputs of guidance loop are lateral
track error & current heading error angle, and output is
desired/reference roll angle. In order to meet the constraints
of high performance in small track error and a bounded
11121

heading error angle in the case of large track error, a nonlinear sliding surface is proposed here.
Current Position & Heading angle
Ref Roll angle

Guidance
Desired Position &

Heading angle
Mission
2.2 Model of System Dynamics

During steady turn when vehicle is banked at an angle , Lift
(L) is resolved into two components cos and sin that
balance the weight and centrifugal force respectively (Fig. 3)
Aileron
Control
Rudder
cos = ,
sin =
Lateral Dynamcis
(1)
where is the mass, is the gravitational acceleration, V is

the velocity of Aircraft/UAV and R is the radius of turn.
From (1) we have
Yaw rate
tan =
roll angle
(2)
Moreover we also know that during steady turn = , so

(2) becomes
Fig. 1: Guidance & Control approach used in this work

The stability of this non-linear sliding surface is proved with
the help of a Lyapunov function. Also the proposed scheme is
implemented in non-linear 6-dof simulation and simulation
results of different cases are shown here, that validate the
robustness of this proposed scheme.
tan =
(3)
Resolving the components of velocity vector in Fig. 2, we

have
= sin
2. PROBLEM DEFINITION
Notation of different variables used in this paper is same as
used in (Siouris 2004; Samar, 2007). Here, is the cross
track error, is the velocity heading, is the reference
heading and = (Fig. 2). Note that magnitude of
should be less than 90 degrees.
(4)
Using = and assumption = 0, (3) becomes

tan =
(5)
Fig. 3: Components of Lift (L) during steady turn

Using assumption , (5) becomes
Fig. 2: Definition of cross track (), , and
tan =
2.1 Assumptions
For way point tracking during straight path = 0, while
during circular path is non-zero but may be small
depending on the mission. In this paper, is assumed small
and neglected here.
While designing this outer guidance loop it is assumed that a
fast inner control loop is already designed. As the inner
control loop is fast enough (at least 5 times), so we assumed
here that the actual roll angle () is approximately equal to
the desired/reference roll angle ( ).
(6)
In summary, the overall dynamics of the outer guidance loop

is governed by (4) and (6) which can be also written in statespace form as
= sin
(7)
tan
(8)
where cross track error y and are the state variables

and reference bank/roll angle is the output of outer
guidance loop. Also note that in case of small ,
that means that state is approximately equal to .
11122

2.3 Control Task

Using readily available sensor information y and ,
control task is to keeps the track error as small as possible by
generating an appropriate . Also the output of
control system should be a bounded number (magnitude <30
degrees).
Now an important question arises, is the motion on sliding

surface stable? Motion on sliding surface is described
by = 0, that is
E + tan1 () = 0
(10)
The stability of (10) can be proved using Lyapunov theory,

Lyapunov candidate function () for stability of (10) is
3. PROPOSED LATERAL CONTROL SCHEME
1 2
1 2
y + 2E =
y + tan1
2
2
3.1 Why Non-Linear Sliding Surface?
And the derivative of Lyapunov function is
In case of bank-to-turn, the UAV roll angle should be
bounded by some finite number (say approximately ). Hence

6
the output of guidance block (reference roll angle) should
also be bounded ( < = ). During flight, large

6
track error is possible due to loss of GPS for long time so the
possibility of large track error cant be ignored during flight.
= sin tan1
Suppose we choose a linear sliding surface = + for

some positive scalar . For performance in case of small
track error, we need a large so that we can reach the origin
, = (0,0) in minimum time. But on the other hand
choosing a large implies that in case of large track error we
should have a large (> 90 degrees) which is not possible
as magnitude of could not exceed . So choice of is

6
trade-off between performance in the case of small track error
and a realizable magnitude of in the case of large track
error, and both constraints cannot be satisfied at the same
time with a linear sliding surface.
(11)
2
tan1 sin tan1
1 + 2 2
12
as tan1 and 1, sin tan1 will

2
2
have a same sign as if > 0. So the derivative of
Lyapunov function in (12) is negative definite if > 0
and 1.
In summary, the proposed non-linear sliding surface (9) is a
stable sliding surface subject to the above stated conditions
> 0 and 1.
3.3 Equivalent Lateral Control
Equivalent control is interpreted (Slotine, 1991) as a
continuous control law that would maintain = 0 if the
dynamics were exactly known. In our case
= +
2
1.5
y
1 + 2 y 2
(13)
0.8
0.6
0.5
0.4
0
E in radians
E in radians
-0.5
-1
-1.5
-2
-2000
0.2
0
-0.2
-0.4
-1500
-1000
-500
500
1000
1500
2000
-0.6
Cross track error (y) in meters
-0.8
-2000
Fig. 4: Linear sliding surface (S) for some positive
-1000
-500
500
1000
1500
2000
Cross track error (y) in meters
3.2 Non-Linear Sliding Surface
Fig. 5: Nonlinear Sliding Surface = + tan1 ()
For performance in case of small track error and also

magnitude of less than 90 degrees, we choose a non-linear
sliding surface
= + tan1 ()
-1500
= 0 implies
0=
(9)
where and are scalars and later we will show that for
stability of sliding surface > 0. Performance in case of
small track error can be changed by changing parameter
while another parameter can be used to keep the magnitude
of less than 90 degrees ( 1). A graph of above
sliding surface is shown in Fig. 5 for some particular and .
tan(_ )
+
sin
1 + 2 y 2
(14)
From (14), equivalent control can be derived as
11123
_ = tan1
sin
1 + 2 2
(15)

4. CONTROL EFFORT BOUNDEDNESS
3.4 Existence of Sliding Mode

A control law should be chosen in such a way that from any
initial condition, the system trajectory is attracted towards the
sliding surface and then slides along the sliding surface
(Bandyopadhyay, 2009). To see the reachability condition,
1
Lyapunov candidate function = S 2 is selected. And the
2
derivative of Lyapunov function is
=
=
tan +
sin
1 + 2 y 2
(16)
As discussed earlier that output of guidance block should be a

bounded number, in this section we have derived conditions
to keep during motion on sliding surface. Motion on

6
sliding surface is described by (10), that is
E + tan1 () = 0
Differentiating (22), we get an expression (15) for equivalent

control that would maintain = 0 if the dynamics were
exactly known. So the equivalent control should always be
less 30 degrees ( _ ).
6
sin tan
1 + 2 2
6
Let us assume
tan =
(17)
is negative definite if
>
1+ 2 y 2
sin( tan1 ()) tan

2
2
1+
6
That can be written as
(18)
sin
2
sin
1 + 2 y 2
(24)
5. SIMULATION RESULTS
In extreme case, the maximum value of right side occurs in

the situation when sin = 1 and = 0. So (18) is
negative definite in whole flight envelope if
>

sin( tan1 ()) tan
1 + 2 2
6 2
In summary, the choice of and should be such that it

satisfies the inequality (24) in order to avoid the control
saturation during motion on sliding surface.
or
>
(23)
In above inequality (23), replacing value of from (22)
and replace it in (16), derivative of Lyapunov function

becomes
= () +
sin
1 + 2 y 2
(22)
(19)
The proposed scheme is implemented in non-linear 6-dof

simulation of a UAV. Prior to implementation of this outer
guidance loop, a robust linear based linear control law
was implemented for inner control loop. To implement the
lateral control law (21), signum function is approximated
by ()
, where is a small scalar positive
+
number, in our case its value is 0.1. After a number of

simulation runs, and values are kept at 0.3333 and 0.003
respectively for better performance and robustness.
3.5 Total Lateral Control

From equations (17) and (19), we have
-4
= tan1
where >
1.5
x 10
or
= tan1
LHS
RHS
(20)
Total lateral control is the sum of (15) and (20)

= tan1
tan1
sin
1 + 2 2

0.5
(21)
where first part is continuous one and the second one is

discontinuous. From practical implementation point of view,
second discontinuous part can be approximated by a
continuous one.
500
1000
Lateral Track Error [m]
1500
Fig. 6: Validation of inequality (21) for particular and
11124
2000
Cross Track Error [m]

sliding surface maximum control effort is at ~250 meters

cross track error.
3000
Circular Path Following

In Fig. 9, the simulation results are plotted for a curved
(~circular) path in the presence of a north wind of 30m/s.
Even in this worst case scenario, the maximum magnitude of
cross track error is less than 45 meters.
2000
1000
0
40
60
80
100
Time [sec]
120
140
160
6. CONCLUSIONS
E [deg]
20
0
-20
-40
40
60
80
0.5
100
Time [sec]
120
140
160
E [rad]
Sliding Surface
UAV Phase Portrait
0
X: 1544
Y: -0.435
Z: 76.72
-0.5
-1000
-500
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
Roll Reference [deg]
40
20
0
X: 76.72
Y: -8.212
-20
-40
40
60
80
100
Time [sec]
120
140
160
Fig. 7: Performance for 2000m cross track error (No wind)

The above selected values of and also satisfy the
inequality (21) and maximum control effort during motion on
sliding surface is expected at cross track error of ~ 250
meters (Fig. 6). For the above selected and, the minimum
value of K in (21) should be greater than 4 (K=10 used in all
simulation results).
Straight Path Following
A new scheme of lateral control for UAVs is proposed here

in this paper. This new scheme is based on a sliding mode
technique with a non-linear sliding surface. Due to limitations
of performance in the case of small track error and keep
for whole flight envelope, a single linear sliding

2
surface is not a feasible solution. So a non-linear sliding
surface that can meet both these limitations is proposed here
in this paper and stability of that non-linear sliding surface is
proved with the help of a Lyapunov function. After the
selection of non-linear sliding surface, a sliding mode based
lateral control law is proposed and condition for reachability
to sliding surface is derived using a Lyapunov function.
Another limitation of guidance block output saturation
(reference roll angle saturation) is also addressed here in this
paper and conditions for saturation avoidance are derived
here.
Above proposed law is implemented in simulation (with
approximation of signum function), and simulation results are
shown here for straight & curved path. To see the robustness
of this proposed algorithm, simulations are performed in the
presence of disturbance (wind). Maximum steady state error
in the case of straight path following and circular path
following is 2.5 meters and 45 meters respectively even in the
presence of a lateral wind of 30m/s. Simulation results also
validate that there is no control effort saturation during
motion on sliding surface. In reaching phase (initial phase
when the system trajectory has not reached the sliding
surface), there is control saturation but reaching phase can be
eliminated using different techniques like a method discussed
in (Bandyopadhyay, 2009).
Problem of chattering in standard sliding mode technique is
settled by smoothing the control input using boundary layer
during implementation of this proposed algorithm. But in a
future work, this problem will be settled by using higher
order sliding mode (HOSM).
Simulation results for 2000m track error in the absence of

wind and in the presence of 30m/s side wind are shown in
Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 respectively. In the absence of wind, it takes
~26.72 seconds to reach the sliding surface and the
subsequent motion takes place on the sliding surface. On the
other hand in the case of side wind of 30m/s, it takes ~0.78
seconds more to reach the sliding surface. In both cases (with
& without wind), there is no overshoot in cross track error
and magnitude of steady state track error is less than 2.5
meters. Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 also validate that during motion on
11125

2000
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with Improved Performance for UAVs. 17th IFAC World
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Sanghyuk Park (2004). Avionics and Control System
Development for Mid-Air Rendezvous of Two Unmanned
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Institute of Technology. USA.
Sanghyuk Park, John Deyst, Jonathan P. How (2007),
Performance and Lyapunov stability of a nonlinear
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Slotine, J.-J. E. and Li, W., Applied Nonlinear Control,
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1500
1000
500
0
40
60
80
100
Time [sec]
120
140
160
60
80
100
Time [sec]
120
140
160
E [deg]
20
-20
-40
40
0.5
0
X: 1494
Y: -0.4341
Z: 77.5
-0.5
-1000
25.65
-500
40
Track( Lat/Long )
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
25.6
lat (deg)
E [rad]
Sliding Surface
UAV Phase Portrait
20
0
25.55
25.5
25.45
X: 77.5
Y: -6.472
25.4
63.4
-20
-40
40
60
80
100
Time [sec]
120
140
2500
160
Fig. 8: Performance for 2000m cross track error (30m/s wind)

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Fig. 9: Performance for curved path (30m/s North wind)
11126

Lateral Control For UAVs Using Sliding Mode Technique

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Preprints of the 18th IFAC World Congress

Milano (Italy) August 28 - September 2, 2011