Path Invariance of a Quadrotor System under Cyber Attacks with Theoretical Guarantees

This paper presents a path-following controller for a quadrotor system to guarantee safe maneuvers, in terms of forward path invariance, in the presence of cyber-physical attacks. We assume that an adversarial agent can control any one of the rotors through a false data injection (FDI) type of attack. A feedback controller is designed using transverse feedback linearization which guarantees that the system follows a class of smooth curves under FDI attacks. Our proposed controller is computationally efficient, with a closed-form analytical expression, that not only mitigates the effect of bounded malicious signal but also ensures mission success. We provide theoretical guarantees of forward path invariance under FDI attacks with realistic assumptions and demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through simulation.