Quad Rotor Research Articles

Solar Powered QuadCopter Drone

Abstract: Drones are a common sight today and are being used in a wide range of applications. Fromselfies to pesticide spraying to military surveillance. Well the problem with surveillance monitoring isthat many applications require long time surveillance. Drones do provide a good view for surveillancemonitoring but have a huge drawback. This is the drone battery life. The major fear a drone pilot faces insurveillance is that the battery may run out and drone may land on a tree or building or some inaccessiblearea from where it cannot be retrieved and thus cannot be charged. This is also the case in military surveillance, the possibility of battery life running out and drone being inaccessible creates limitationsfor drone pilots during surveillance/monitoring. Well we here develop a drone with solution to these problems using solar power to constantly charge the drone to increase its flight time as well as the ability to land the drone anywhere and automatically its battery remotely to take flight later. This will lead to improved flight time as well as automatic battery charging of drones in inaccessible areas so that it cantake off from the same spot on charging. The drone is a quad rotor drone that makes use of 4 x highpowered drone motors with propellers to provide required lift to the drone. The drone body is integratedwith solar panels for high efficiency charging during idle time as well as during flight time for improved flight times. The drone is integrated with a wifi camera that can be monitored over an android smartphone using wifi connection. It makes use of a rc remote controller to receive control commands for theuser. The drone onboard rc receiver is used to receive control commands from the user and operate dronemotors to achieve desired flight.

Horizontal Fixed Attitude Flight of Quad Rotor Helicopter with Tilting Rotor

A quad rotor helicopter (QRH), a type of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), uses a tilted attitude to generate a horizontal thrust component in the flying direction. In the case of autonomous control, the attitude control system is used to tilt the airframe against disturbances such as crosswinds. Consequently, the flying attitude of a QRH is always inclined. In this study, a tilting mechanism for rotors (TMR) was mounted on a QRH to maintain a horizontal attitude. The TMRs were tilted to generate thrust against disturbances without inclining the airframe. The system was constructed using a QRH and TMRs tilted around only one axis and allocated every 90°. Because the airframe is always horizontal, this system can be used for the precise measurement of landforms and buildings. This paper reports the dynamic modeling of QRH equipped with TMRs and discusses the horizontal constant attitude flight using the proposed system.

Improving the Deployment of Vehicular Quad rotors in Challenging Environments: Addressing Control, Perception, and Planning Issues with Innovative Solutions

Improving the Deployment of Vehicular Quad rotors in Challenging Environments: Addressing Control, Perception, and Planning Issues with Innovative Solutions

Position and Attitude Control Based on Single Neuron PID With Gravity Compensation for Quad Rotor UAV

Position and Attitude Control Based on Single Neuron PID With Gravity Compensation for Quad Rotor UAV

Research on Smart Construction Education Training Contents Using a Drone Simulator

Recently, application field of drone is expending throughout the growth of drone technology in the structural change of whole society which calls the 4th industrial Revolution. So, the construction field has been already using drone video shooting in construction design and efforts to introduce drone, which is one of smart construction technology, are also increasing even in facility maintenance management. It takes so much time and costs to train drone experts who are required in the smart construction field so training contents studies, which are for smart construction education, demand to acquire professional skills and expend education opportunities using a drone simulator. Therefore, we present real-world-images based on spatial information for realistic images using the flight dynamics modeling of a quad rotor drone and render a smart construction drone simulator for drone pilots education training to inspect facilities safety.

Target Enclosing and Coverage Control for Quadrotors with Constraints and Time-Varying Delays: A Neural Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Formation Control Approach.

This paper investigates the problem of formation fault-tolerant control of multiple quadrotors (QRs) for a mobile sensing oriented application. The QRs subject to faults, input saturation and time-varying delays can be controlled to perform a target-enclosing and covering task while guaranteeing the state constraints will not be exceeded. A distributed formation control scheme is proposed, using a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN)-based time-delay position controller and an adaptive fault-tolerant attitude controller. The Lyapunov–Krasovskii approach is used to analyze the time-varying delay. Barrier Lyapunov function is deployed to handle the prescribed constraints, and an auxiliary system combined with a command filter is designed to resolve the saturation problem. An RBFNN and adaptive estimators are deployed to provide estimates of disturbances, fault signals and uncertainties. It is proven that all the closed-loop signals are bounded under the proposed protocol, while the prescribed constraints will not be violated, which enhances the flight safety and QR formation’s applicability. Comparative simulations based on application scenarios further verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Analysis of Reflected Signal of quad Rotor UAV based on Model Fitting in Mobile Communication System

In view of the many scenes of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) detection, a third-party signal source is used to design a receiver to monitor the UAV. It is of great significance to understand the reflection of the signal illuminating the UAV. Taking the communication base station (BS) signal as the third-party signal source, and considering the complete transmission link, reflection changes and loss fading of the communication signal, this study conducts model fitting for irregular UAV targets, simplifying complex targets into a combination of simple targets. Furthermore, the influence of the dielectric constant of the target surface and the signal irradiation angle on the signal reflection is analyzed. The analysis shows that the simulation results of this model fitting method are consistent with the results of other literature, which provides theoretical support for the detection of low and slow small targets such as UAVs.

壁面近傍で低空ホバリングするクアッドロータの吹き返しが回転翼の誘導流れに与える影響

One of the problems with multirotors is that when flying near a wall, such as during infrastructure inspections, the companion flow passing through the rotor blades is blown back by the ground or wall surface, causing instability in the flight attitude of the aircraft(1)(2). As a previous study on this phenomenon, as part of the development of a quadrotor capable of autonomous flight even in complex narrow spaces, we focused on a small quadrotor with four rotors among multi-rotors and investigated the effect on aerodynamic characteristics when hovering near a wall, and found that even at heights outside the ground effect, the direction and position of sidewalls Ground effect The results showed that even at heights outside the ground effect, the direction and position of the sidewalls increased the thrust of the wall-side rotor due to the blowback effect, causing the aircraft to tilt (roll) at some positions. In this study, to clarify the effect of the wake interference of quad rotor on the induced flow, we investigated the tip vortex trajectry and the induced flow velocity in the high thrust and rolling region(posture tilted backward against the wall) using a high-speed camera, a hot-wire anemometer, respectively. We show some of reasons to increase the thurust of wall side roters.

Adaptive Fuzzy Consensus Control Strategy for UAS-Based Load Transportation Tasks

A control strategy for enabling a team of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) to cooperatively transport a cable-suspended rigid-bodypayload of unknown characteristics is proposed. Considering the rigid-body payload as a disturbance with unmodeled dynamics affecting the aircraft, a fuzzy approximator is designed to identify the lumped disturbances existing in the system, which include also the forces of interaction between the aircraft. Next, a nonlinear controller is designed, which makes use of the approximator to compensate such disturbances. Making use of the fuzzy approximator and the nonlinear controller, a novel consensus-type strategy is proposed, enabling the load transportation task by means of two cooperative quad rotorcraft UASs. The stability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated making use of Lyapunov theory. The nonlinear consensus controller enhanced with fuzzy compensation is compared with respect to a feedback controller with feedforward compensation, demonstrating superior performance of the proposed technique in terms of robustness and stability. Experimental results demonstrate the applicability of the theoretical framework for executing the real-time transportation of a cable-suspended rigid-body payload by means of a team of two cooperative quad rotor UASs.

Research on dropping test and numerical simulation for unmanned aerial vehicle

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) may lose control and collide with other objects in the air, thus causing serious flight safety accidents. In this paper, the impact load and damage mechanism of 4.78 kg quad rotor UAV were studied. First, the accurate numerical model of UAV was established in the explicit dynamic analysis software LS-DYNA. Then the overall drop simulation and test of UAV with two different heights were carried out. Finally, the results were compared and analyzed. The high coincidence of experimental results and simulation results showed that the calculation method and simulation model are reasonable. On this basis, the impact load and damage of UAV in different speeds, heading angles and pitch angles were simulated and analyzed. The results revealed that the heading angle, pitch angle and velocity of UAV during collision have a significant effect on the impact load between UAV and the impacted object. It also affected the damage degree of UAV itself. In the collision, the arm of the UAV tended to break at the position joined to the fuselage. The battery hanging on the fuselage was also liable to separate from the fuselage. The research results of this paper have a certain guiding significance for the formulation of UAV safe flight airworthiness regulations.

Fusing denoised stereo visual odometry, INS and GPS measurements for autonomous navigation in a tightly coupled approach

In a GPS-denied environment, even the combination of GPS and Inertial Navigation System (INS) cannot provide location reliably and accurately. We propose a new denoised stereo Visual Odometry VO/INS/GPS integration system for autonomous navigation based on tightly coupled fusion. The presented navigation system can estimate the location of the vehicle in either GPS-denied or low-texture environments. Because of the random walk characteristics of the drift error of the inertial measurement units (IMU), the errors of the states grow with time. To correct these growing errors, a continuous update of observations is necessary. For this purpose, the system state vector is augmented with the extracted features from a stereo camera. Consequently, we utilize the measurements of extracted features from consecutive frames and GPS-derived information to make these updates. Moreover, we apply the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) technique before data fusion to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the inertial sensor measurements and attenuate high-frequency noises while conserving significant information like vehicle motion. To verify the performance of the proposed method, we utilize four flight benchmark datasets with top speeds of 5 m/s, 10 m/s, 15 m/s, and 17.5 m/s, respectively, collected over an airport runway by a quad rotor. The results demonstrate that the proposed VO/INS/GPS navigation system has a superior performance and is more stable than the VO/INS and GPS/INS methods in either GPS-denied or low-texture environments; it outperforms them by approximately 66% and 54%, respectively.

Motion Control Near Singular Posture for a Quad Rotor with 1-DOF Tilt Mechanisms

Motion Control Near Singular Posture for a Quad Rotor with 1-DOF Tilt Mechanisms

System Identification and Controller Design of Quad Rotor Tilt Wing Aircraft

System Identification and Controller Design of Quad Rotor Tilt Wing Aircraft

Surveillance FPV Drone with Obstacle Avoidance System

The unmanned air vehicle (UAV) is mostly used in inspection and surveillance operations recent. The UAV is also termed as vertical take-off landing (VTOL), since it is capable of vertical take-off and landing without need of a runway. The big tunnels, infrastructure and large bridges are inserted using UAV by photographic inspection. UAVs are also used for surveillance purposes by the military and by the security guards. Since this is a new technology of the last decade, deep research has to be done. UAVS have the cross structure arrangement to which the rotor blades are attached at the end points of cross beams. These rotors are driven by the DC brush motors and motors are powered by the lithium ion rechargeable battery. The working principle of quad- rotors is the same as the chopper by controlling the rpm of each rotor blade, due to which the gyroscopic torque will act and the vehicle will move in the desired direction. To hold the quad- rotor at a stationary position at some height constant rpm of all rotors has to be maintained. This signal is given by the controller from some distance, which is received by the, and then it processes the signal and drives the motor via the flight controller and drives the rotors. A quad- rotor is equipped with a high quality camera for photography and video shooting during surveillance. Since a quad rotor is manoeuvring in air, the wind may exert a drag force and take it along with it and the quad rotor may hit any obstacle or inspection objects. To avoid this, it is equipped with the ultrasonic sensors which is capable of sensing the obstacle and realize collision avoidance between wall or any object.

Application of improved active disturbance rejection control algorithm in tilt quad rotor

The Tilt Quad Rotor (TQR) has complex dynamics characteristics, especially in conversion mode. It is difficult to build the dynamic model of the TQR and the environmental factors have a great influence on it. To solve the problem of control in conversion mode of TQR, this paper carries out the design of the controller based on improved Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC). According to the characteristics of flight in conversion mode, Tracking Differentiator (TD) with explicit model is used to solve the problem of multiple integrals when the system is high-order system. Extended State Observer (ESO) with Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural network is used to estimate and compensate for internal and external uncertainties, and the adaptive sliding mode control in Nonlinear State Error Feedback (NLSEF) is used to improve the response speed of the controller and reduce the parameters which should be tuned. Through the flight control simulation of the TQR, the validity and rationality of the control system are verified.

Controlling of an Under-Actuated Quadrotor UAV Equipped With a Manipulator

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) equipped with a manipulator offer an additional flexibility and smart way to grasp the desired objects from inaccessible locations where the access of ground vehicles (GV) are not possible. In this research, we design an adaptive control based regulation, pole-placement and tracking (RST) control scheme for controlling the nonlinear behavior of an under-actuated quad rotor aerial vehicle. The overall performance of the system dealt by MIT rules. The aerial vehicle is equipped with a camera and a gripper that helps us to locate the wanted object from inaccessible location. The model of quad rotor UAV has six degrees of freedom (6-DOF) and the equipped gripper is about (2-DOF). For a successful flight operation UAV requires a reliable controller to stabilize the aerodynamic effects, disturbances that produced by the gripper. Due to aforementioned issue, design an adaptive RST controller, to control the dynamic behavior of the highly nonlinear complex system. Moreover, the effectiveness of the designed controller proven by applying computer-based simulation and it will verify experimentally. Lastly, it observes that the designed controller shows better robustness and good steady state performance to accomplish the given task.

Research on Integrated Optimization Design Method of High-Efficiency Motor Propeller System for UAVs With Multi-States

With the popularity of electric multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (EMRUAV), the problem of low efficiency of the motor propeller system (MPS) becomes serious especially for EMRUAVs which have multiple working states. To solve this problem, an integrated optimization design method for high-efficiency MPS is proposed using an improved parallel particle swarm optimization and differential evolution (PSODE) hybrid algorithm. First, the brushless motor as well as the variable-speed and the adjustable-pitch propellers is modelled. Then considering the characteristics of the motor and the propeller sufficiently, an integrated optimization method for variable-speed and adjustable-pitch MPS is proposed by utilizing the improved PSODE. Specially, the self-organizing feature map theory is added to substitute the traditional “winner-take-all” method in the interactive study of the improved PSODE. Next, the optimization of a small electric-powered tilt quad rotor (TQR) which has four states: hovering, cruising, transition and maximum speed is carried out. At last, the wind-tunnel experiments are implemented to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed optimization method. The results indicate that the adjustable-pitch MPS is more suitable for EMRUAVs which have multiple working states, and that the improved PSODE has faster convergence speed and better global search ability than other optimization methods.

Tilting Path Optimization of Tilt Quad Rotor in Conversion Process Based on Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

The tilt quad rotor (TQR) has the problem of manipulation redundancy due to the aerodynamic structure changing in conversion mode. The tilting path is limited by the conversion corridor. In order to solve the problem of manipulation redundancy in conversion mode and find out the optimal tilting path in conversion corridor, the aerodynamic model of the TQR based on Goldstein vortex theory is established to obtain the manipulation derivative matrix and conversion corridor. A novel manipulation strategy is proposed, the altitude, forward velocity and tilt angle are introduced into the manipulation strategy to ensure the stability of the altitude and attitude in conversion process. To find out the optimal tilting path in conversion corridor, a novel tilting strategy is proposed based on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm and compared with another three tilting path. To verify the credibility of the flight dynamics model, the effectiveness of manipulation strategy and tilting path optimization, the simulation and flight test were carried out. The simulation and flight test results show that the manipulation strategy proposed in this paper can solve the manipulation redundancy in conversion mode very well, and the proposed tilting path can ensure the stability of the altitude and attitude in conversion corridor.

Manipulation strategy of tilt quad rotor based on active disturbance rejection control

To solve the problem of manipulation redundancy and coupling in transition mode of tilt quad rotor, this paper studied the manipulation strategy in transition mode, and carried out the design of the attitude controller based on active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) with sliding mode control in nonlinear state error feedback (NLSEF). According to the characteristics of flight in transition mode, the rudders and propellers were assigned different control rights. The differential output of the tracking differentiator was used as the attitude angular rate instruction to simplify the structure of the attitude controller. Extended state observer was used to estimate and compensate internal and external uncertainties. The sliding mode control in NLSEF was used to improve response speed of the controller. Through the flight control simulation and flight test of the tilt quad rotor, the validity of the control system and the rationality of the manipulation strategy were verified.

An Adaptive Distributed Consensus Control Algorithm Based on Continuous Terminal Sliding Model for Multiple Quad Rotors’ Formation Tracking

Distributed consensus formation tracking problem of slow convergence and low accuracy for multiple quad rotors are solved in this paper. Continuous nonsingular terminal sliding model algorithm (CNTSMA) under Inner-Outer loop control structure is considered to deal with the control problem of nonlinear, strong coupling and underactuated characteristic of a quad rotor. For better convergence and higher tracking accuracy, an adaptive algorithm (denoted by ACNTSMA) further focused on coupling of x and y directions, with sliding model observer (SMO) to compensate system disturbances and uncertainties is proposed. Furthermore, to solve the consensus formation tracking problem, a consensus control protocol under a full-connected topology based on ACNTSMA is proposed, including formation pattern consensus controller and formation distance consensus controller. Stability theory and simulation results prove the proposed control algorithm is able to accurately achieve the first-order (position and velocity) consensus for multiple quad rotors' formation tracking. Besides, stability analysis of the proposed consensus control protocol illustrates that all sliding modes with finite-time stability applicable to second-order integral models are supposed to be established. And the proposed controller also has better convergence and faster response speed with no chattering for trajectory tracking.