Scientific Research and Essays

  • Abbreviation: Sci. Res. Essays
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1992-2248
  • DOI: 10.5897/SRE
  • Start Year: 2006
  • Published Articles: 2768

Full Length Research Paper

Flight PID controller design for a UAV quadrotor

  Atheer L. Salih1*, M. Moghavvemi1, Haider A. F. Mohamed2 and Khalaf Sallom Gaeid1      
  1Centre for Research in Applied Electronics (CRAE), Electrical Engineering Department, University Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, Semenyih 43500, Selangor, Malaysia.  
Email: [email protected]

  •  Accepted: 15 November 2010
  •  Published: 31 December 2010

Abstract

 

 

This paper presents the modeling of a four rotor vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned air vehicle known as the quad rotor aircraft. The paper presents a new model design method for the flight control of an autonomous quad rotor. The paper describes the controller architecture for the quad rotor as well. The dynamic model of the quad-rotor, which is an under actuated aircraft with fixed four pitch angle rotors was described. The Modeling of a quad rotor vehicle is not an easy task because of its complex structure. The aim is to develop a model of the vehicle as realistic as possible. The model is used to design a stable and accurate controller. This paper explains the developments of a PID (proportional-integral-derivative) control method to obtain stability in flying the Quad-rotor flying object. The model has four input forces which are basically the thrust provided by each propeller connected to each rotor with fixed angle. Forward (backward) motion is maintained by increasing (decreasing) speed of front (rear) rotor speed while decreasing (increasing) rear (front) rotor speed simultaneously which means changing the pitch angle. Left and right motion is accomplished by changing roll angle by the same way. The front and rear motors rotate counter-clockwise while other motors rotate clockwise so that the yaw command is derived by increasing (decreasing) counter-clockwise motors speed while decreasing (increasing) clockwise motor speeds.

 

Key words: Quadrotor, proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), MATLAB / Simulink.