A Pragmatic Template for Quadcopter Development

This article presents a pragmatic quadcopter development template for parcel delivery in Nigeria. The quadcopter is equipped with a camera, parcel pouch and wireless telecommunication to capture live events and send them back to the control station for real-time delivery feedback. The study also discusses the design methodology adopted as a conceptual design approach vital to product development, it encompasses information gathering and identifying the problem, creating the solutions systematically and eventually evaluating and developing a concept for the drone and its attributes and presenting clear results for design calculations.

Quadcopter Design for Payload Delivery

This paper presents the design and implementation of a quadcopter capable of payload delivery. A quadcopter is a unique unmanned aerial vehicle which has the capability of vertical take-off and landing. In this design, the quadcopter was controlled wirelessly from a ground control station using radio frequency. It was modeled mathematically considering its attitude and altitude, and a simulation carried out in MATLAB by designing a proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller was applied to a mathematical model. The PID controller parameters were then applied to the real system. Finally, the output of the simulation and the prototype were compared both in the presence and absence of disturbances. The results showed that the quadcopter was stable and able to compensate for the external disturbances.

Quadcopter UAV Modeling and Automatic Flight Control Design

The mathematical model of quadcopter-unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)is derived by using two approaches:One is the Newton-Euler approach which is formulated using classical mechanics;and other is the Euler-Lagrange approach which describes the model in terms of kinetic(translational and rotational)and potential energy.The proposed quadcopter′s non-linear model is incorporated with aero-dynamical forces generated by air resistance,which helps aircraft to exhibits more realistic behavior while hovering.Based on the obtained model,the suitable control strategy is developed,under which two effective flight control systems are developed.Each control system is created by cascading the proportional-derivative(PD)and T-S fuzzy controllers that are equipped with six and twelve feedback signals individually respectively to ensure better tracking,stabilization,and response.Both proposed flight control designs are then implemented with the quadcopter model respectively and multitudinous simulations are conducted using MATLAB/Simulink to analyze the tracking performance of the quadcopter model at various reference inputs and trajectories.

Simple GUI Wireless Controller of Quadcopter

This paper presents the development of remotely operated Quadcopter system. The Quadcopter is controlled through a graphical user interface (GUI) where the communication between GUI and Quadcopter is constructed by using wireless communication system. The Quadcopter balancing condition is sensed by FY90 controller and IMU 5DOF sensor. For smooth landing, Quadcopter is equipped with ultrasonic sensor. All signals from sensors are processed by Arduino Uno microcontroller board and output from the Arduino Uno microcontroller board is implemented to control Quadcopter propellers. The GUI is designed using Visual Basic 2008 Express as interfacing communication between the Proportional, Integral and Derivative (PID) controller and the Quadcopter system. The experiment shows that the Quadcopter system can hover while maintain it balancing and the stability is guaranteed. Moreover, the developed system is able to cope with load disturbance up to 250 gduring the hover position. Maximum operated time of Quadcopter is six minutes using 2200 mAh Lipo battery and operate time can be increased by using largest battery capacity.

Design of an Executable ANFIS-based Control System to Improve the Attitude and Altitude Performances of a Quadcopter Drone

Nowadays,quadcopters are presented in many life applications which require the performance of automatic takeoff,trajectory tracking,and automatic landing.Thus,researchers are aiming to enhance the performance of these vehicles through low-cost sensing solutions and the design of executable and robust control techniques.Due to high nonlinearities,strong couplings and under-actuation,the control design process of a quadcopter is a rather challenging task.Therefore,the main objective of this work is demonstrated through two main aspects.The first is the design of an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system(ANFIS)controller to develop the attitude and altitude of a quadcopter.The second is to create a systematic framework for implementing flight controllers in embedded systems.A suitable model of the quadcopter is also developed by taking into account aerodynamics effects.To show the effectiveness of the ANFIS approach,the performance of a well-trained ANFIS controller is compared to a classical proportional-derivative(PD)controller and a properly tuned fuzzy logic controller.The controllers are compared and tested under several different flight conditions including the capability to reject external disturbances.In the first stage,performance evaluation takes place in a nonlinear simulation environment.Then,the ANFIS-based controllers alongside attitude and position estimators,and precision landing algorithms are implemented for executions in a real-time autopilot.In precision landing systems,an IR-camera is used to detect an IR-beacon on the ground for precise positioning.Several flight tests of a quadcopter are conducted for results validation.Both simulations and experiments demonstrated superior results for quadcopter stability in different flight scenarios.