Stability and Control of a Remotely Controlled Indoors Micro Hovering Vehicle
Arthur J. Grunwald · AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit · 2005
A novel stability and control system has been presented for a remotely controlled indoor miniature platform, designed to be flown through passages, which are slightly larger than its outer dimensions. The vehicle has been fitted with four rotors, of which the lift vectors can be controlled in magnitude and direction. Contrary to the single-rotor helicopter, the combination of the four vector-controlled rotors allows the motions of the vehicle to be controlled in all six-degrees-of-freedom so that the vehicle can hover and move in any horizontal or vertical direction while remaining leveled. The stabilization method for keeping the platform level utilizes the optical flow from an array of miniature TV cameras together with inertial measurements from solid-state sensors. The optical and inertial measurements are blended in a complementary filtering scheme, realized as an Extended Kalman Filter, yielding both short-term and long-term stability.