Robust Backstepping Control Applied to UAVs for Pest Recognition in Maize Crops

In this paper, a robust control technique is developed to achieve the quadrotor stabilization against unmodeled matching vanishing dynamics. The synthesis of the proposed robust control is based on the Lyapunov approach and the backstepping method allowing to construct an iterative control algorithm. To compare the performance of the proposed controller, a Proportional Derivative (PD) controller is used to obtain experimental results in an outdoor environment. To compare the closed-loop system responses with both controllers, the Integral Absolute Error is computed and several tests are conducted to calculate the error standard deviation. Ultimately, employing the robust backstepping control approach in pest recognition in maize crops, which is a specific task of precision agriculture, demonstrates its effectiveness in improving the trajectory tracking of the vehicle while it captures images of the crops.