Payload Drop Application Using an Unmanned Quadrotor Helicopter Based on Gain-Scheduled PID and Model Predictive Control

Abstract

Two useful control techniques are investigated and applied experimentally to an unmanned quadrotor helicopter for a practical and important scenario of using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for dropping a payload in circumstances where search and rescue and delivery of supplies and goods is dangerous and difficult to reach environments such as forest or high building fires fighting, rescue in earthquake, flood and nuclear disaster situations. The two considered control techniques for such applications are the Gain-Scheduled Proportional-Integral-Derivative (GS-PID) control and the Model Predictive Control (MPC). Both the model-free (GS-PID) and model-based (MPC) algorithms show a very promising performance with application to taking-off, height holding, payload dropping, and landing periods in a payload dropping mission. Finally, both algorithms are successfully implemented on an unmanned quadrotor helicopter testbed (known as Qball-X4) available at the Networked Autonomous Vehicles Lab (NAVL) of Concordia University for payload dropping tests to illustrate the effectiveness and performance comparison of the two control techniques.