Sliding mode control (SMC) is a widely used control law for quadrotor regulation and tracking control problems. The purpose of this article is to solve the tracking problem of quadrotors using a relatively novel nonlinear control law based on SMC that makes use of a conditional integrator. It is demonstrated by a motivation example that the proposed control law can improve the transient response and chattering shortcomings of the previous approaches of similar SMC based controllers. The adopted Newton–Euler model of quadrotor dynamics and controller design is treated separately in two subsystems: attitude and position control loops. The stability of the control technique is demonstrated by Lyapunov’s analysis and the effectiveness and performance of the proposed method are compared with a similar integral law, also based on SMC, and validated by tracking control problems using numerical simulations. Simulations were developed in the presence of external disturbances in order to evaluate the controller robustness. The effectiveness of the proposed controller was verified by performance indexes, demonstrating less accumulated tracking errors and control activity and improvement in the transient response and disturbance rejection when compared to a conventional integrator sliding mode controller.

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<p>Power transmission lines are of great importance for the operation of all sectors of society, such as commerce, industry and public agencies. To ensure reliability and availability of power supply, regular and occasional inspections are conducted, mostly using patrol with binoculars, helicopters or truck cranes. Research is being developed using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to make this activity autonomous, faster, safer, and less costly. The present work aims to analyze research related to the autonomous control of the UAV along the transmission lines through a systematic review of the literature (SRL), apply a viable solution and to verify the possible lacuna in this state of the art. Improvements in safety, computational process and energy efficiency with low-cost were identified. The results presented can help the research community to perform the working this state of art, from the suggestions of autonomous tracking of transmission lines.</p>

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