Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are affordable these days. For that reason, there are currently examples of the use of UAVs in recreational, professional and research applications. Most of the commercial UAVs use Px4 for their operating system. Even though Px4 allows one to change the flight controller structure, the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) format is still by far the most popular choice. A selection of the PID controller parameters is required before the UAV can be used. Although there are guidelines for the design of PID parameters, they do not guarantee the stability of the UAV, which in many cases, leads to collisions involving the UAV during the calibration process. In this paper, an offline tuning procedure based on the multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm for the attitude and altitude control of a Px4-based UAV is proposed. A Pareto dominance concept is used for the MOPSO to find values for the PID comparing parameters of step responses (overshoot, rise time and root-mean-square). Experimental results are provided to validate the proposed tuning procedure by using a quadrotor as a case study.
Highlights
One of these classifications is based on the combination of research and military literature: micro air vehicle (MAV), mini, tactical, medium-altitude and long-endurance (MALE) and high-altitude and long-endurance (HALE)
The proposed tuning procedure is based on the multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm
In order to make the MOPSO algorithm even more robust, a fourth dimension was added to the Pareto front and a dual evaluation was made for each particle
Summary
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), known as drones, have been used for centuries They were initially used for military purposes. The first recorded use of a UAV dates back to 1849 when the Austrians attacked Venice (Italy) using explosive-laden, unmanned balloons [1]. Even though these unmanned balloons are not considered UAV’s today, this was a technology that the Austrians developed which led to further breakthroughs in the development of the UAV. During the ensuing decades (1940 to 1980), the development of new technologies in UAVs remained linked to military applications, making them much more reliable and improving different technical aspects. The availability of more efficient, economic batteries and advances in the field of automatic control increased the popularity of UAVs for non-military purposes, both for the transport of cargo, e.g., the Amazon Prime Air UAV, and for recreational use, photography and filming, e.g., the UAV Phantom [7]
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