Quadrotor roll and pitch stabilization using system identification based redesign of empirical controllers

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are currently one of the hot topics of study which have numerous applications such as remote sensing, aerial surveillance, exploration, search and rescue, transport, scientific research and armed attacks. In this work we consider a test-bed for the design of a low cost flight controller for a quadrotor and we demonstrate the design of the roll and pitch controllers on an experimental setup through the stages of data collection, modeling, control design and verification. The procedure consists of four stages: 1) Experimental determination of controller coefficients, 2) Data collection, 3) System identification, 4) Controller redesign by tuning coefficients with a numerical search. It is observed that the system designed as such is capable of achieving satisfactory pitch and roll stabilization, and coefficient tuning on the identified model noticeably improves the settling time and steady state oscillation amplitude.