Control System Design Of QuadCoptor Using Pixhawl FMU
Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) flying machines have evolved greatly in the past century and have attracted great attention from researchers in different disciplines due to their capabilities and vast variety of missions they can do as compared to fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). Out of many reasons that attracted researchers and engineers towards VTOL planes, some of them are:
1. Very little space is needed for take off and landing
2. Increased portability as compared to a fixed wing aircraft
3. VTOL drones, especially smaller drones are more suitable for aerial photography than fixed wing aircrafts
It is not easy to control a quadrotor due to its highly nonlinear dynamics, variable coupling and model uncertainties. The under actuation property of the quadrotor also adds another degree of complexity to the model due to limited availability of control techniques that can be applied to under actuated systems. This thesis presents the development of mathematical modeling, control techniques, simulation and real-time testing on a developed quadrotor.
Quadrotors are one-of-a-kind UAVs (Unmanned aerial vehicles) capable of executing complex maneuvers owing to its six degrees of freedom. Because of their low noise and quick movement they find a lot of applications in military, transportation and surveillance. In order to get quick movement, control algorithms with small settling times and higher accuracy are required. This thesis explores robust control for the quadrotor, simulations of the control algorithms and practical validation using an embedded processor. The control algorithm is proof tested with the actual quad-copter, interfaced with MATLABs PSP (Pilot Support Package) which provides various Simulink actuator blocks to do real time testing. After the algorithm is tested, it is used as a firmware for the quadrotor and actual flight is performed with Pixhawk hardware at its core.