No abstract

In this paper, the design of a controller for the altitude and rotational dynamics is presented. In particular, the control problem is to maintain a desired altitude in a fixed position. The unmanned aerial vehicle dynamics are described by nonlinear equations, derived using the Newton–Euler approach. The control problem is solved imposing the stability of the error dynamics with respect to desired position and angular references. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed control are tested, first, via numerical simulations, using the Pixhawk Pilot Support Package simulator provided by Mathworks. Then, the controller is tested via a real-time implementation, using a quadrotor Aircraft F-450.

This paper presents a controller designed via the backstepping technique, for the tracking of a reference trajectory obtained via the photogrammetric technique. The dynamic equations used to represent the motion of the quadrotor helicopter are based on the Newton–Euler model. The resulting quadrotor model has been divided into four subsystems for the altitude, longitudinal, lateral, and yaw motions. A control input is designed for each subsystem. Furthermore, the photogrammetric technique has been used to obtain the reference trajectory to be tracked. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed nonlinear controllers have been tested via numerical simulations using the Pixhawk Pilot Support Package developed for Matlab/Simulink.