Advanced UAV Aerodynamics, Flight Stability and Control

21System Identification and Flight Control of an Unmanned Quadrotor

Wei Wei¹, Mark B. Tischler², Nicholas Schwartz³ and Kelly Cohen³

¹Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

²US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, Moffett Field, CA, USA

³Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

21.1 Introduction

In recent years, there has been great interest in using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for many different mission profiles, including package delivery, fire‐fighting, and many others. With modern advances in electronics, the cost and effectiveness of UAV configurations makes them very feasible to develop. The popularity of quadrotor UAVs has recently skyrocketed. The simple and rugged control via propeller RPM, the ability to scale down the configuration, and its low cost make it an optimal choice for many different types of mission. However, the quadrotor configuration is naturally unstable in flight, so a feedback control system is necessary so that it can be easily piloted.

In the aerospace industry, there is a major focus on high‐fidelity aircraft and rotorcraft simulation. Accurate simulations greatly reduce the costs of pilot training and control system development. Having access to accurate dynamic models of aircraft or rotorcraft configurations allows flight control engineers to efficiently develop control systems for their particular configuration. To ...