SUMMARYThe paper presents the design of a mini‐unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attitude controller using the backstepping method. Starting from the nonlinear dynamic equations of the mini‐UAV, by using the backstepping method, the authors of this paper obtained the expressions of the elevator, rudder, and aileron deflections, which stabilize the UAV at each moment to the desired values of the attitude angles. The attitude controller controls the attitude angles, the angular rates, the angular accelerations, and other variables describing the UAV longitudinal and lateral motions. The designed controller has been implemented in Matlab/Simulink environment, and its effectiveness has been tested with a campaign of numerical simulations using data from the UAV flight tests. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.