Modeling, design and experimental study for a quadcopter system construction

Abstract

The popularity of quadcopters are increasing as the sensors and control systems are getting more advanced. The quadcopter is naturally unstable, has a complex dynamic model and six degrees of freedom. Even with four motors it is underactuated, and cannot move translative without rotating about one of its axes. There are many commercially quadcopters for sale, but was not considered as it would result in a backwards design process where the design is decided before the needs. To meet the university’s lab facilities a quadcopter was designed to fit a single board RIO from National Instruments. This is the preferred platform used by the university and it has high performance characteristics. The quadcopter requires an extensive control system in order to fly. With many parameters it is difficult to implement and tune a regulator for such a system. In addition to an even more complex regulator many sensors are needed in order to make the quadcopter autonomous. For the attitude estimation sensor fusion is required to get a robust and reliable measurement. Based on the dynamic model the sensors needed was chosen. They were tested one by one before implementation in a control system. A tilt regulator was able to stabilize the quadcopter around one axis in a test rig. Building a quadcopter for an educational purpose, and to discover and resolve its complexity is an experimental project, as this has never been done at this university. The final quadcopter concept is well suited for further experimental work.