Design of a quadrotor flight test stand for system identification

Abstract

This paper presents the design, development and construction of a flight test stand for a quadrotor UAV. As opposed to alternate forms of UAV, the power plant in the case of the quadrotor serves a dual purpose of control and propulsion. Since control and propulsion are coupled, the power plant (BLDC motor coupled with propeller) was studied in detail using a black box structure. Extractions of motor parameters in previous studies used traditional BLDC motor equations and propeller theory however the accuracy achievable and confidence in the extracted parameters remained questionable. The developed data acquisition process served to satisfy this need by the construction of a test bench that allows for the extraction of the unknown parameters instilling confidence in the modelling process. The established relationships are then used as inputs into a developed six degree of freedom Euler based mathematical model. A mission profile was constructed with distinct phases of which the mathematical model was used to simulate. Each phase in the mission profile excited different modes of the quadrotor dynamics creating an ideal simulation environment in which changes can be implemented and studied.

Improved particle filter-based estimation of a quadrotor subjected to uncertainties

“…Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have a flexible control structure that they can be controlled by an operator or by autonomous flight controllers. Based on this flexibility, UAVs can be used in risky tasks without any direct human intervention (Beharie et al , 2015; Unal, 2021). Quadrotors are four-rotor-based UAVs that are widely used by the communities due to their advantages such as hover, low-speed flight and vertical takeoff and landing (Choutri et al , 2020).…”