Modeling and Control of a Quad-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle at Hovering Position
Ruth Tesfaye · 2012
This thesis titled Modeling and Control of a Quad-rotor Unmanned Aerial vehicle at hovering Position by Ruth Tesfaye presents the study of modeling and control of quad-rotor Unmanned Aerial vehicle (UAV) characteristics that could be used for any of its application. Quad-rotor UAVs consist of two pairs of counter rotating rotors placed at the end of a cross configuration; symmetrical body about the center of gravity that coincides with the origin of the body frame of reference. The Newton-Euler formulation has been used to derive the defining equations of motion of the system at hovering position i.e. the six degree-of-freedom. Based on the verified model, control strategies were developed using linear PID controller and an LQR controller. The PID controller was adopted as a reference control law from the work of A.ouladi [1]. A numerical simulation was then conducted using MATLAB® Simulink®. First, the derived model was simulated to verify the behavior of the quad-rotor for model verification, and then a second simulation was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the developed control law. The results and the interpretations of this study are then presented and discussed on their respective areas.