Robust distributed attitude synchronization of multiple three-DOF experimental helicopters

•We consider the synchronized trajectory-tracking problem of a group of disturbed 3-DOF experimental helicopters.•We develop a simple distributed solution which adopts. continuous disturbance estimators to achieve disturbance compensation.•Setting small estimator parameters will lead to small disturbance estimation errors and trajectory tracking errors.•Experimental results on a “four 3-DOF helicopters” platform verify the theoretical results.

Multiple experimental three-degrees-of-freedom (three-DOF) helicopters that are equipped with active disturbance systems constitute an attractive platform to validate robust control strategies. In this paper, a distributed synchronization controller is developed for such a platform, where each helicopter is subjected to unknown model uncertainties and external disturbances, and the desired trajectories are generated online, communicated through a network and not accessible by all helicopters. The controller is composed of a continuous tracker and a continuous uncertainty and disturbance estimator (UDE). The tracker makes the nominal closed-loop system globally asymptotically stable, and the UDE output is used to reject total uncertainties. The conditions that ensure zero-error tracking for each helicopter are identified; for the case with nonzero error, explicit relationship inequalities between the involved design parameters and the ultimate bound of error are revealed. Experimental results of four cases demonstrate improved tracking and synchronization accuracy of using the UDE with small parameters.