The adaptive control system of quadrocopter motion

In this paper we present a system for automatic control of a quadrocopter based on the adaptive control system. The task is to ensure the motion of the quadrocopter along the given route and to control the stabilization of the quadrocopter in the air in a horizontal or in a given angular position by sending control signals to the engines. The nonlinear model of a quadrocopter is expressed in the form of a linear non-stationary system

The adaptive control system of quadrocopter motion

In this paper we present a system for automatic control of a quadrocopter based on the adaptive control system. The task is to ensure the motion of the quadrocopter along the given route and to control the stabilization of the quadrocopter in the air in a horizontal or in a given angular position by sending control signals to the engines. The nonlinear model of a quadrocopter is expressed in the form of a linear non-stationary system

Development of U-model enhansed nonlinear systems

Nonlinear control system design has been widely recognised as a challenging issue where the key objective is to develop a general model prototype with conciseness, flexibility and manipulability, so that the designed control system can best match the required performance or specifications. As a generic systematic approach, U-model concept appeared in Prof. Quanmin Zhu’s Doctoral thesis, and U-model approach was firstly published in the journal paper titled with ‘U-model based pole placement for nonlinear plants’ in 2002.The U-model polynomial prototype precisely describes a wide range of smooth nonlinear polynomial models, defined as a controller output u(t-1) based time-varying polynomial models converted from the original nonlinear model. Within this equivalent U-model expression, the first study of U-model based pole placement controller design for nonlinear plants is a simple mapping exercise from ordinary linear and nonlinear difference equations to time-varying polynomials in terms of the plant input u(t-1). The U-model framework realised the concise and applicable design for nonlinear control system by using such linear polynomial control system design approaches.Since the first publication, the U-model methodology has progressed and evolved over the course of a decade. By using the U-model technique, researchers have proposed many different linear algorithms for the design of control systems for the nonlinear polynomial model including; adaptive control, internal control, sliding mode control, predictive control and neural network control. However, limited research has been concerned with the design and analysis of robust stability and performance of U-model based control systems.This project firstly proposes a suitable method to analyse the robust stability of the developed U-model based pole placement control systems against uncertainty. The parameter variation is bounded, thus the robust stability margin of the closed loop system can be determined by using LMI (Linear Matrix Inequality) based robust stability analysis procedure. U-block model is defined as an input output linear closed loop model with pole assignor converted from the U-model based control system. With the bridge of U-model approach, it connects the linear state space design approach with the nonlinear polynomial model. Therefore, LMI based linear robust controller design approaches are able to design enhanced robust control system within the U-block model structure.With such development, the first stage U-model methodology provides concise and flexible solutions for complex problems, where linear controller design methodologies are directly applied to nonlinear polynomial plant-based control system design. The next milestone work expands the U-model technique into state space control systems to establish the new framework, defined as the U-state space model, providing a generic prototype for the simplification of nonlinear state space design approaches.The U-state space model is first described as a controller output u(t-1) based time-varying state equations, which is equivalent to the original linear/nonlinear state space models after conversion. Then, a basic idea of corresponding U-state feedback control system design method is proposed based on the U-model principle. The linear state space feedback control design approach is employed to nonlinear plants described in state space realisation under U-state space structure. The desired state vectors defined as xd(t), are determined by closed loop performance (such as pole placement) or designer specifications (such as LQR). Then the desired state vectors substitute the desired state vectors into original state space equations (regarded as next time state variable xd(t) = x(t) ). Therefore, the controller output u(t-1) can be obtained from one of the roots of a root-solving iterative algorithm.A quad-rotor rotorcraft dynamic model and inverted pendulum system are introduced to verify the U-state space control system design approach for MIMO/SIMO system. The linear design approach is used to determine the closed loop state equation, then the controller output can be obtained from root solver. Numerical examples and case studies are employed in this study to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods

Fault tolerant control of a quadrotor using L-1 adaptive control

Purpose – The growing use of small unmanned rotorcraft in civilian applications means that safe operation is increasingly important. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the fault tolerant properties to faults in the actuators of an L1 adaptive controller for a quadrotor vehicle. Design/methodology/approach – L1 adaptive control provides fast adaptation along with decoupling between adaptation and robustness. This makes the approach a suitable candidate for fault tolerant control of quadrotor and other multirotor vehicles. In the paper, the design of an L1 adaptive controller is presented. The controller is compared to a fixed-gain LQR controller. Findings – The L1 adaptive controller is shown to have improved performance when subject to actuator faults, and a higher range of actuator fault tolerance. Research limitations/implications – The control scheme is tested in simulation of a simple model that ignores aerodynamic and gyroscopic effects. Hence for further work, testing with a more complete model is recommended followed by implementation on an actual platform and flight test. The effect of sensor noise should also be considered along with investigation into the influence of wind disturbances and tolerance to sensor failures. Furthermore, quadrotors cannot tolerate total failure of a rotor without loss of control of one of the degrees of freedom, this aspect requires further investigation. Practical implications – Applying the L1 adaptive controller to a hexrotor or octorotor would increase the reliability of such vehicles without recourse to methods that require fault detection schemes and control reallocation as well as providing tolerance to a total loss of a rotor. Social implications – In order for quadrotors and other similar unmanned air vehicles to undertake many proposed roles, a high level of safety is required. Hence the controllers should be fault tolerant. Originality/value – Fault tolerance to partial actuator/effector faults is demonstrated using an L1 adaptive controller

Robust quasi-LPV model reference FTC of a quadrotor UAV subject to actuator faults

A solution for fault tolerant control (FTC) of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is proposed. It relies on model reference-based control, where a reference model generates the desired trajectory. Depending on the type of reference model used for generating the reference trajectory, and on the assumptions about the availability and uncertainty of fault estimation, different error models are obtained. These error models are suitable for passive FTC, active FTC and hybrid FTC, the latter being able to merge the benefits of active and passive FTC while reducing their respective drawbacks. The controller is generated using results from the robust linear parameter varying (LPV) polytopic framework, where the vector of varying parameters is used to schedule between uncertain linear time invariant (LTI) systems. The design procedure relies on solving a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) in order to achieve regional pole placement and H8 norm bounding constraints. Simulation results are used to compare the different FTC strategies.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Attitude Stabilization of a Quadrotor by Means of Event-Triggered Nonlinear Control

International audienceEvent-triggered control is a resource-aware sampling strategy that updates the control value only when a certain condition is satis ed, which denotes event instants. Such a technique allows to reduce the control computational cost and communications. In this paper, a quaternion-based feedback is developed for event-triggered attitude stabilization of a quadrotor mini-helicopter. The feedback is derived from the universal formula for eventtriggered stabilization of general nonlinear systems a ne in the control. The proposed feedback ensures the asymptotic stability to the desired attitude. Real-time experiments are carried out in order to show the convergence of the quadrotor states to the desired attitude as well as the robustness with respect to external disturbances. Results show that the proposed control can reduce by 80 % the communications of the embedded system without sacri cing performance of the whole system. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the rst time that a nonlinear event-triggered controller is experimentally applied to the attitude stabilization of an unmanned aircraft system

Adaptive and Optimal Motion Control of Multi-UAV Systems

This thesis studies trajectory tracking and coordination control problems for single and multi unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems. These control problems are addressed for both quadrotor and fixed-wing UAV cases. Despite the fact that the literature has some approaches for both problems, most of the previous studies have implementation challenges on real-time systems. In this thesis, we use a hierarchical modular approach where the high-level coordination and formation control tasks are separated from low-level individual UAV motion control tasks. This separation helps efficient and systematic optimal control synthesis robust to effects of nonlinearities, uncertainties and external disturbances at both levels, independently. The modular two-level control structure is convenient in extending single-UAV motion control design to coordination control of multi-UAV systems. Therefore, we examine single quadrotor UAV trajectory tracking problems to develop advanced controllers compensating effects of nonlinearities and uncertainties, and improving robustness and optimality for tracking performance. At fi rst, a novel adaptive linear quadratic tracking (ALQT) scheme is developed for stabilization and optimal attitude control of the quadrotor UAV system. In the implementation, the proposed scheme is integrated with Kalman based reliable attitude estimators, which compensate measurement noises. Next, in order to guarantee prescribed transient and steady-state tracking performances, we have designed a novel backstepping based adaptive controller that is robust to effects of underactuated dynamics, nonlinearities and model uncertainties, e.g., inertial and rotational drag uncertainties. The tracking performance is guaranteed to utilize a prescribed performance bound (PPB) based error transformation. In the coordination control of multi-UAV systems, following the two-level control structure, at high-level, we design a distributed hierarchical (leader-follower) 3D formation control scheme. Then, the low-level control design is based on the optimal and adaptive control designs performed for each quadrotor UAV separately. As particular approaches, we design an adaptive mixing controller (AMC) to improve robustness to varying parametric uncertainties and an adaptive linear quadratic controller (ALQC). Lastly, for planar motion, especially for constant altitude flight of fixed-wing UAVs, in 2D, a distributed hierarchical (leader-follower) formation control scheme at the high-level and a linear quadratic tracking (LQT) scheme at the low-level are developed for tracking and formation control problems of the fixed-wing UAV systems to examine the non-holonomic motion case. The proposed control methods are tested via simulations and experiments on a multi-quadrotor UAV system testbed

ℒ1 adaptive control of quadrotor UAVs in case of inversion of the torque direction

This paper presents a method for fault tolerant control of quadrotor UAVs in case of inversion of the torque direction, a situation that might occur due to structural, hardware or software issues. The proposed design is based on multiple-model ℒ1 adaptive control. The controller is composed of a nominal reference model and a set of degraded reference models. The nominal model is that with desired dynamics that are optimal regarding some specific criteria. In a degraded model, the performance criteria are reduced. It is designed to ensure system robustness in the presence of critical failures. The controller is tested in simulations and it is shown that the multiple model ℒ1 adaptive controller stabilizes the system in case of inversion of the control input, while the ℒ1 adaptive controller with a single nominal model fails

Modeling and Robust Control of Flying Robots Using Intelligent Approaches Modélisation et commande robuste des robots volants en utilisant des approches intelligentes

This thesis aims to modeling and robust controlling of a flying robot of quadrotor type. Where we focused in this thesis on quadrotor unmanned Aerial Vehicle (QUAV). Intelligent nonlinear controllers and intelligent fractional-order nonlinear controllers are designed to control. The QUAV system is considered as MIMO large-scale system that can be divided on six interconnected single-input–single-output (SISO) subsystems, which define one DOF, i.e., three-angle subsystems with three position subsystems. In addition, nonlinear models is considered and assumed to suffer from the incidence of parameter uncertainty. Every parameters such as mass, inertia of the system are assumed completely unknown and change over time without prior information. Next, basing on nonlinear, Fractional-Order nonlinear and the intelligent adaptive approximate techniques a control law is established for all subsystems. The stability is performed by Lyapunov method and getting the desired output with respect to the desired input. The modeling and control is done using MATLAB/Simulink. At the end, the simulation tests are performed to that, the designed controller is able to maintain best performance of the QUAV even in the presence of unknown dynamics, parametric uncertainties and external disturbance