Quadrotor control in a wind field

Abstract

This paper investigates the ability of a quadrotor to maneuver in a wind field. A dynamic model of a quadrotor is presented to model its motion. The quadrotor model includes a wind effect model to quantify the effect of wind on the dynamics of a quadrotor. A proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is shown as a baseline controller typically used on quadrotors. A LQR controller is then shown as an alternative to a PID controller. These two controllers are compared in a simulation environment using the wind effect model and simulated wind disturbances. Both controllers are found to have similar performance in a wind field, though the LQR controller is found to be easier to tune.

Wind Measurement and Simulation Techniques in Multi-Rotor Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

“…The temporal frequency f ω is given by (22). The relation between spatial frequency and angular frequency is described by (23). The relation in (23) is substituted in each of the PSD functions S a−w (f ), S c−w (f ), S v−w (f ) and the result is divided by B u to derive the PSD functions in terms of the temporal frequency S a−w (f ω ), S c−w (f ω ), S v−w (f ω ) as expressed in (24).…”

Urban flow and small unmanned aerial system operations in the built environment

“…Regardless, flight testing has also demonstrated that the high frequency of control inputs required in highly turbulent conditions can exceed even the capability of experienced pilots for both multirotor and fixed-wing UA (Loxton et al, 2008;. As a result, improvements in disturbance rejection strategies continue to be investigated (Sydney, Smyth, & Paley, 2013b;Szczublewski, 2012;Tran, Bulka, & Nahon, 2015;Yeo, Sydney, & Paley, 2016).…”

“…The mean wind impacts multirotors both through frame drag (Chen, He, & Zhou, 2013;Sydney et al, 2013a) and by setting the angle of the flow approaching the propellers. The horizontal component of this flow into the spinning rotor disk creates a force and corresponding moments that most significantly impact a multirotor's motion (Tran et al, 2015). However, under identical flight conditions, translational accelerations of an unmanned helicopter have been found to be roughly half that of a fixed-wing UA with rotational accelerations less than one-third .…”

Observer-based Super Twisting Controller Robust to Wind Perturbation for Multirotor UAV

“…Among the first approach, Sydney et al [12] carried out an estimation process of the wind effect on a quadrotor and used it to design a control law capable of countering its disturbances. The authors in [13] investigated the wind effect on a quadrotor model, and showed that it can be viewed as an oblique flow approaching the rotors based on the bladeelement momentum theory. Huan et al [14] took into account the aerodynamic effect by proposing a law of aggressive command for a quadrotor using the blade flapping approach.…”