{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,16]],"date-time":"2026-02-16T20:27:41Z","timestamp":1771273661804,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,7]],"date-time":"2025-07-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1751846400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Scientific and Technological Project of Gansu Province","award":["24CXGA042"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["24CXGA042"]}]},{"name":"Scientific and Technological Project of Gansu Province","award":["202410731067"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["202410731067"]}]},{"name":"University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Plan Project","award":["24CXGA042"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["24CXGA042"]}]},{"name":"University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Plan Project","award":["202410731067"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["202410731067"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Computation"],"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper presents a composite disturbance-tolerant control framework for quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). By constructing an enhanced dynamic model that incorporates parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator faults and considering the inherent underactuated and highly coupled characteristics of the UAV, a novel robust adaptive sliding mode controller (RASMC) is designed. The controller adopts a hierarchical adaptive mechanism and utilizes a dual-loop composite adaptive law to achieve the online estimation of system parameters and fault information. Using the Lyapunov method, the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system is rigorously proven. Simulation results demonstrate that, under the combined effects of external disturbances and actuator faults, the RASMC effectively suppresses position errors (&lt;0.05 m) and attitude errors (&lt;0.02 radians), significantly outperforming traditional ADRC and LQR control methods. Further analysis shows that the proposed adaptive law enables the precise online estimation of aerodynamic coefficients and disturbance boundaries during actual flights, with estimation errors controlled within \u00b110%. Moreover, compared to ADRC and LQR, RASMC reduces the settling time by more than 50% and the tracking overshoot by over 70% while using the (tanh(\u00b7)) approximation to eliminate chattering. Prototype experiments validate the fact that the method achieves centimeter-level trajectory tracking under real uncertainties, demonstrating the superior performance and robustness of the control framework in complex flight missions.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/computation13070162","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,7]],"date-time":"2025-07-07T08:58:23Z","timestamp":1751878703000},"page":"162","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Robust Trajectory Tracking Fault-Tolerant Control for Quadrotor UAVs Based on Adaptive Sliding Mode and Fault Estimation"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"13","author":[{"given":"Yukai","family":"Wu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer and Communication, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou 730050, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9637-9937","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Guobi","family":"Ling","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Electrical and Information Engineering, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou 730050, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8533-3901","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yaoke","family":"Shi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer and Communication, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou 730050, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"dpae033","article-title":"Autonomous navigation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for border patrolling: A stochastic framework","volume":"36","author":"Biskin","year":"2025","journal-title":"IMA J. 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