Surrogate Optimal Fractional Control for Constrained Operational Service of UAV Systems

In the expeditiously evolving discipline of autonomous aerial robotics, the efficiency and precision of drone control deliveries have become predominant. Different control strategies for UAV systems have been thoroughly investigated, yet PID controllers still receive significant consideration at various levels in the control loop. Although fractional-order PID controllers (FOPID) have greater flexibility than integer-order PID (IOPID) controllers, they are approached with caution and hesitance. This is due to the fact that FOPID controllers are more computationally intensive to tune, as well as being more challenging to implement accurately in real time. In this paper, we address this problem by developing and implementing a surrogate-based analysis and optimization (SBAO) of a relatively high-order approximation of FOPID controllers. The proposed approach was verified through two case studies; a simulation quadrotor benchmark model for waypoint navigation, and a real-time twin-rotor copter system. The obtained results validated and favored the SBAO approach over other classical heuristic methods for IOPID and FOPID.