Design of a Quadrotor Roll Controller Using System Identification to Improve Empirical Results

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), specifically quadrotors, is one of the major topics of study in current literature with applications to numerous fields. In this paper we consider a test-bed for the design of a low cost flight controller for a quadrotor and as a first step in design we demonstrate the design of the roll controller on an experimental setup through the stages of data collection, modeling, control design and verification. The procedure consists of four stages: 1) Experimental determination of controller coefficients, 2) Data collection, 3) System identification, 4) Controller redesign by tuning coefficients with a numerical search. It is observed that the system designed as such is capable of achieving the desired roll stabilization, and coefficient tuning on the identified model noticeably improves the settling time and steady state oscillation amplitude.