Design and analysis of a feedback loop to regulate the basic parameters of the unmanned aircraft

Abstract

Purpose

The motivation to perform research on feedback control system for unmanned aerial vehicles, a fact that each quadrocopter is unstable.

Design/methodology/approach

For this reason, it is necessary to design a control system which is capable of making unmanned aerial vehicle vertical take-off and landing (UAV VTOL) stable and controllable. For this purpose, it was decided to use a feedback control system with cascaded PID controller. The main reason for using it was that PID controllers are simple to implement and do not use much hardware resources. Moreover, cascaded control systems allow to control object response using more parameters than in a standard PID control. STM32 microcontrollers were used to make a real control system. The rapid prototyping using Embedded Coder Toolbox, FreeRTOS and STM32 CubeMX was conducted to design the algorithm of the feedback control system with cascaded PID controller for unmanned aerial vehicle vertical take-off and landings (UAV VTOLs).

Findings

During research, an algorithm of UAV VTOL control using the feedback control system with cascaded PID controller was designed. Tests were performed for the designed algorithm in the model simulation in Matlab/Simulink and in the real conditions.

Originality/value

It has been proved that an additional control loop must have a full PID controller. Moreover, a new library is presented for STM32 microcontrollers made using the Embedded Coder Toolbox just for the research. This library enabled to use rapid prototyping while developing the control algorithms.

Citation

Chodnicki, M., Bartnik, K., Nowakowski, M. and Kowaleczko, G. (2018), "Design and analysis of a feedback loop to regulate the basic parameters of the unmanned aircraft", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 92 No. 3, pp. 318-328. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEAT-01-2018-0039