Simulation of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle

The main goal of this thesis is to validate a simulator model for a quadcopter manual and autonomous fl ight. It is intended to use the validated simulator for predicting quadcopter behaviour in future complex missions without the necessity of realizing real tests. Characterization of the vehicle physical parameters for obtaining its main performance coefficients and its moments of inertia are needed for taking into account the quadcopter properties in the simulator. Therefore, the vehicle has been assembled in order to ensure the best characterization for each component. Then, a simulation environment for the quadcopter testing has been chosen. SITL software has been selected due to its ability for simulating all the functions of the autopilot board used by the quadcopter. The work operation of this software has been analyzed, realizing that the equations of motions model used could be improved, since it was not included all the physical theoretical effects. Thus, the work analysis has been consisted in testing real and simulated fl ights and studying the infl uence of the improvent of the quadcopter equations of motion. Either manually controlled and autonomous missions tests have been done, in order to cover all the vehicle flight possibilities. Based on the numerical results, it is shown how the equation of motion improvement are responsible of more realistic quadcopter flight simulations.Ingeniería Aeroespacia