Control of a mini-UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)

• Main Author: Goh, Guo Dong
• Other Authors: Zhong Zhaowei
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Aeronautical engineering::Aircraft
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/64610
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Autonomous flight of an autonomous UAV has always been an interest to aviation industry. With a tremendous amount of research, autonomous take-off and landing of an UAV on a fixed point or along a fixed path is no longer unachievable. However, there is only a handful research on the autonomous landing of an UAV on a moving platform. Hence, generation of algorithms for autonomous landing of UAV on a moving platform is attempted. In this project, the dynamics and control theory of the quad copter are studied carefully. Next, the simulation environment is built using Ch language (a super set of C language) due to its strong graph plotting ability. Besides, several experiments are conducted to determine the quad copter’s parameters which are used in the simulation. In addition to that, OpenGL library is used to display the quad copter’s motions so that it is easier to visualise instead of relying on a few graphs. Lastly, the algorithms for autonomous landing and various manoeuvres are developed. The algorithms for different manoeuvres are tested and it is shown that the quad copter is able to perform all the prescribed manoeuvres. The results of each manoeuvre are discussed in detail in the result and discussion section. It is shown from the results that the quad copter is able to perform landing even at high speed of 7 m/s in simulation with a steady state error of smaller than 0.11 meter.