Dynamics and control of a quadcopter

Advancements in sensors and control systems has resulted in many research in developing and experimenting on mini flying vehicles. Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) type Unmanned Areal Vehicles (UAV) with four rotors, also known as, Quadcopter’s, are widely used today in commercial applications. They have a complex dynamic model with six degrees of motion making it naturally unstable. Simplicity of its control system and its superior payload capacity has made these types of UAV’s more attractive than other UAV’s. Hovering and VTOL capabilities have made them useful in surveillance, rescue and unmanned treacherous operations. Although researches have reached far ahead, achieving a stable autonomous flight is still challenging. Study of dynamic model and Newton-Euler equations is carried out to develop a mathematical model on Matlab/Simulink. And this simulator is used to develop appropriate PID control algorithm and is introduced into the model. Improvement in stability and reduction of error with the new controller is studied with different simulations. The performance of PID controller is compared with a PD controller by feeding different external disturbances in the feedback