Research Article Real-Time Hovering Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Cuauht´ emoc Acosta L ´ ua , 1,2 Claudia Carolina Vaca Garc´ ıa , 1 Stefano Di Gennaro , 2,3 B. Castillo-Toledo , 2,4 and Mar´ ıa Eugenia S ´ anchez Morales 1 1 Technological Sciences Department, La Cienega University Center, University of Guadalajara, Av. Universidad 1115, Ocotl´ an, Jalisco CP 47820, Mexico 2 Center of Excellence DEWS (Design Methodologies of Embedded Controllers, Wireless Interconnect and Systems-on-chip), University of L’Aquila, Via Vetoio, Loc. Coppito, L’Aquila 67100, Italy 3 Department of Information Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics, University of L’Aquila, Via Vetoio, Loc. Coppito, L’Aquila 67100, Italy 4 Center for Research and Advanced Studies, Campus Guadalajara, Av. del Bosque 1145 Col. El Baj´ ıo, Zapopan CP 45019, Mexico CorrespondenceshouldbeaddressedtoCuauht´ emocAcostaL´ ua; cuauhtemoc.acosta@cuci.udg.mx Received 24 April 2020; Accepted 4 June 2020; Published 27 July 2020 GuestEditor:YiQi Copyright©2020Cuauht´emocAcostaL´ uaetal.isisanopenaccessarticledistributedundertheCreativeCommonsAttribution License,whichpermitsunrestricteduse,distribution,andreproductioninanymedium,providedtheoriginalworkisproperlycited. Inthispaper,thedesignofacontrollerforthealtitudeandrotationaldynamicsispresented.Inparticular,thecontrolproblemis to maintain a desired altitude in a fixed position. e unmanned aerial vehicle dynamics are described by nonlinear equations, derivedusingtheNewton–Eulerapproach.econtrolproblemissolvedimposingthestabilityoftheerrordynamicswithrespect to desired position and angular references. e performance and effectiveness of the proposed control are tested, first, via numericalsimulations,usingthePixhawkPilotSupportPackagesimulatorprovidedbyMathworks.en,thecontrolleristested via a real-time implementation, using a quadrotor Aircraft F-450. 1. Introduction Quadrotors have recently attracted the attention of many researchersduetotheirinterestingapplications.Asamatter of fact, the potential applications of such devices are countless. Examples of such applications include searching and surveillance, monitoring, and rescuing tasks. From a methodological point of view, the interest relies on the fact that a quadrotor is a complex underactuated system with high nonlinearities and strong dynamical couplings. Fur- thermore, it is affected by aerodynamic disturbances, unmodeled dynamics, and parametric uncertainties. erefore, the quadrotors represent an interesting testbed for testing new control techniques. ere are a large number of works dealing with quad- rotors. As far as the mathematical model is concerned, in Bouabdallahetal.[1],ZengandZhao[2],andNagatyetal. [3], a Newton–Euler model was presented. Furthermore, Magnussen et al. [4] and Valenti et al. [5] considered quaternions to describe the angular kinematics, whilst Antonio-Toledo et al. [6] applied the Euler–Lagrange equations to obtain the whole quadrotor mathematical model. Regarding the control of quadrotors, many control techniques have been proposed. In Panomruttanarug et al. [7] and Pounds et al. [8], the linear quadratic regulator control and the proportional integral derivative control, respectively, were exploited to design a control law. How- ever,thesecontrollersensureonlylocalstability.Inorderto enlargethebasinofattraction,nonlinearcontroltechniques have also been considered. Examples are sliding model control Luque–Vega et al. [9], backstepping Bouabdallah and Siegwart [10], and adaptive control Matouk et al. [11]. Moreover, a global fast dynamic terminal sliding mode control method was proposed for position and attitude tracking control in Xiong and Zhang [12]. An adaptive commandfilteredbacksteppingcontrollawwasdesignedfor trajectorytrackinginChoiandAhn[13].InLiuetal.[14],a robust adaptive attitude tracking control for a quadrotor with an unknown inertia matrix and bounded external disturbances was proposed. A command filtered Hindawi Mathematical Problems in Engineering Volume 2020, Article ID 2314356, 8 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/2314356