Quad Rotor Research Articles

Modeling and Simulation of a Quad-Tilt Rotor Aircraft

Multi-rotor autonomous aerial vehicles have been proposed for several missions where the capability of controlled flight in small areas is required. Unfortunately, small-size electrically powered rotary wings UAVs have usually very short endurance, because of inherent limitation in battery energy density and constraints on maximum weight of the battery pack. At the same time, maneuverability can be improved by a variation of rotor thrust orientation. This paper presents a novel quad—rotor configuration where the use of a combustion engine and variable pitch propeller will allow for increasing endurance performance, whereas tilting of rotor disks improves maneuverability. A preliminary design of simple control laws is also discussed for this particular configuration, tested on a few basic maneuvers.

Dual Control System for Virtual Protection of a Remote UAV Experiment

The topic of this paper is the utilisation of a strategy with a dual control system for the prevention of damage on laboratory equipment used in a remote laboratory. One control system is implemented before the laboratory is deployed and is responsible for damage control and can override the second control system that is programmed by the user of the remote laboratory and is fully configurable. The laboratory is used for verification of control algorithms for quad rotor helicopters through practical experiments. The damage control strategy should not limit or impede the natural movement of the equipment as long as the behaviour is kept within predefined limits. The nature of the system to be controlled, exclude the use of physical constraints that are normally used for damage control, as these in some way or another will impede or limit the movement of the helicopter.

Development and Testing of a Quad Rotor Smartphone Control System for Novice Users

With recent regulatory efforts to reduce restrictions placed on the operation of Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) in the United States, it is likely that in the next few years, these vehicles will become commonplace in the commercial marketplace as they are in military environments. In order to reduce the barrier to entry for operations of MAVs, customers of these systems will require ease of operation as well as minimal training time in order to reduce costs. To this end, a smartphone application was developed to control a quadrotor remotely in the exploration of an unknown environment, and tested for users with only three minutes of training. Initial motion capture room tests produced encouraging results for localization and target identification tasks, however, such environments are inherently artificial and the extensibility of such results is limited. A follow-on outdoor field study was conducted in order to compare the indoor and outdoor results and to assess operator performance in a realistic environment. Performance on the outdoor localization tasks was comparable to the indoor study, however, participants generally performed slightly worse on the target identification task in the outdoor experiment, attributed to camera image quality and GPS localization issues. Other issues such as wind and flight safety considerations are discussed.

2A1-H10 4ロータテールシッタ無人航空機のホバリング飛行制御(飛行ロボット・メカトロニクス(1))

Quad rotor helicopters has simple mechanism and high stability. However, it is not easy for a quad rotor helicopter to fly long time and long distance, because most of the thrust is consumed to lift the body, and hence horizontal component of the thrust is small. In this paper, we present the experimental results of a quad rotor tail-sitter UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) which is composed of a quad rotors and fixed wing. Developed UAV can hover like a quad rotor helicopter, and can fly long distance like a fixed wing airplane. We designe attitude and altitude control system of the UAV for hovering. In order to verify the designed control systems, we conducted hovering control flight experiment. Additionally, we identified both the impact of propeller slipstream on yaw control and the solutions.

Design and Attitude Control of a Quad-Rotor Tail-Sitter Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

In this paper, we present the development of a quad-rotor tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is composed of quad rotors and a fixed wing. The developed UAV can hover like a quad-rotor helicopter and can fly long distance like a fixed-wing airplane. The main wing of the developed UAV is taken from a commercially available radio-controlled airplane and other parts such as the body frame are newly developed. A microcomputer, various sensors and a battery are mounted on the UAV for autonomous flight without any support from a ground system. Attitude and altitude control systems are developed for the UAV. In order to verify the designed controller, a three-dimensional flight simulator of a quad-rotor tail-sitter UAV is developed by use of MATLAB/Simulink. This paper also describes attitude control experiments. The results show that the propeller slipstream has a negative influence on attitude control. Solutions for the negative influence of the propeller slipstream are also discussed in this paper.

912 ダクトファンを用いたクアッドローターヘリコプターの姿勢制御(ロボティクス・メカトロニクスV)

912 ダクトファンを用いたクアッドローターヘリコプターの姿勢制御(ロボティクス・メカトロニクスV)

Simulation of the Mathematical Model of a Quad Rotor Control System Using Matlab Simulink

Quad rotor vehicles are gaining prominence as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) owing to their simplicity in construction and ease of maintenance. They are being widely developed for applications relating to reconnaissance, security, mapping of terrains and buildings, etc. The control of the quad rotor is a complex problem. As a precursor to developing a model based design, the simulation of the mathematical model of the quad rotor is implemented. This will facilitate easier implementation of the model based design using Matlab Simulink©.

Flight PID controller design for a UAV quadrotor

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.

A Survey on Remotely Operated Quadrotor Aerial Vehicle using the Camera Perspective

survey paper presents a mission-centric approach to controlling the optical axis of a video camera mounted on a camera manipulator and fixed to a quad rotor remotely operated vehicle. A four-DOF quad rotor, UAV model will be combined with a two-DOF camera kinematic model to create a single system to provide a full six DOF actuation of the camera view. This survey work proposed exploits that all signals are described in camera frame. The closed-loop controller is designed based on a Lyapunov-type analysis so that the tracking result is shown to produce Globally Uniformly Ultimately Bounded (GUUB). Computer simulation results are provided to demonstrate the suggested controller. (1)

Attitude Control of Quad Rotors QTW-UAV with Tilt Wing Mechanism

In this paper, we propose an autonomous attitude control of a quad tilt wing-unmanned aerial vehicle (QTW-UAV). A QTW-UAV can achieve vertical takeoff and landing; further, hovering flight, which are characteristic of rotary-wing aircraft such as helicopter. And high cruising speeds, which is a characteristic of fixed-wing aircraft, can be also achieved by changing the angle of the rotors and wings by a tilt mechanism. First, we construct an attitude model of the QTW-UAV by using the identification method. We then design the attitude control system with a Kalman filter-based linear quadratic integral (LQI) control method; the experiment results show that a model-based control design is very useful for the autonomous control of a QTW-UAV.

First Principle Approach to Modeling of Primitive Quad Rotor

By the development of recent technology, a new variant of rotorcrafts having four rotors start drawing attention from aerial-robotics engineers more than before. Its potential spans from just being control device test bed to performing difficult task such as carrying surveillance device to unreachable places. In this regards, modeling a quad-rotor is significant in analyzing its dynamic behavior and in synthesizing control system for such a vehicle. This paper summarizes the modeling of a mini quad-rotor aerial vehicle. A first principle approach is considered for deriving the model based on Euler-Newton equations of motion. The result of the modeling is a simulation platform that is expected to acceptably predict the dynamic behavior of the quad-rotor in various flight conditions. Linear models associated with different flight condition can be extracted for the purpose of control synthesis.

Accurate Modeling and Robust Hovering Control for a Quad–rotor VTOL Aircraft

Quad-robot type (QRT) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been developed for quick detection and observation of the circumstances under calamity environment such as indoor fire spots. The UAV is e...

Dynamic modeling and nonlinear control strategy for an underactuated quad rotor rotorcraft

In this paper, a nonlinear dynamic MIMO model of a 6-DOF underactuated quad rotor rotorcraft is derived based on Newton-Euler formalism. The derivation comprises determining equations of motion of the quad rotor in three dimensions and seeking to approximate the actuation forces through modeling of the aerodynamic coefficients and electric motor dynamics. The derived model is dynamically unstable, so a sequential nonlinear control strategy is implemented for the quad rotor. The control strategy includes exact feedback linearization technique, using the geometric methods of nonlinear control. The performance of the nonlinear control algorithm is evaluated using simulation and the results show the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy for the quad rotor rotorcraft near quasi-stationary flight.

Backstepping based PID Control Strategy for an Underactuated Aerial Robot

In this paper a nonlinear model of an underactuated quad rotor aerial robot is derived, based on Newton-Euler formalism, and backstepping based PID control strategy is implemented for the derived model. Model derivation comprises determining equations of motion of the quad rotor in three dimensions and seeking to approximate actuation forces through modeling of aerodynamic coefficients and electric motor dynamics. The derived MIMO model, constituted of translational and rotational subsystem, is dynamically unstable. A nonlinear control strategy is therefore implemented for the quad rotor aerial robot. The control strategy includes integral backstepping control for the translational subsystem and backstepping based PID control for the rotational subsystem. The stability of the control design is ensured by Lyapunov stability theorem. The performance of the nonlinear control strategy is evaluated using nonlinear simulation. The simulation results, obtained from backstepping based PID, are compared with conventional optimized PID controller. For the conventional PID controller, the optimization algorithm used is to minimize the Integral of Absolute Error (IAE). Results of comparison validate effectiveness of the backstepping based PID control strategy for the underactuated aerial robot near quasi stationary flight.

Attitude Control of Quad Rotors QTW-UAV with Tilt Wing Mechanism

In this paper, we propose the autonomous attitude control of Quad Tilt Wing (QTW) -UAV. QTW-UAV can realize the vertical takeoff and landing, and hovering flight that seems to be the helicopter, and the high cruising speed that seems to be the fixed-wing aircraft by changing an angle of a rotors and wings by using tilt mechanism. Firstly, we make the attitude model of QTW-UAV by using identification method. Secondly, we designed attitude control system with kalman filter based LQI control method. And lastly, we show the experiment result. The experiment result shows model based control design are very useful for autonomous control for QTW-UAV.