Adaptive-Robust Vertical Interaction and Climbing Control of Micro-Aerial Robot with Experimental Validation
Sandeep Gupta, Tushar Jain, Laxmidhar Behera, Suvendu Samanta · 2025
This paper presents a new adaptive sliding mode control technique for a micro aerial robot to enable autonomous transitioning of the robot from free flight to climb or descend or vice-versa on a vertical surface. A passive wheel mechanism is utilized for vertical climbing on indoor and outdoor surfaces. To ensure robustness with regard to wall friction and a nonuniform vertical surface, a friction compensation adaptive law is proposed. For nominal control, a non-singular fast terminal sliding mode control approach is used in this work. The double power rate reaching law is utilized to suppress the chattering in control action to a significant level as well as to speed up the sliding variable convergence. The Lyapunov stability criterion is used to prove the stability of the closed-loop system. To validate the control performance, experiments are performed on a custommade wall climbing-type micro aerial robot in the real world. The efficacy of the proposed control scheme is shown through experimental results for free-flight, vertical interaction, and vertical climbing onto a vertical flat surface.