Robot nonlinear control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’ multitasking
ISSN: 0144-5154
Article publication date: 2 October 2018
Issue publication date: 6 December 2018
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a unified motion control scheme for quadcopters which not only solves the point stabilization and trajectory tracking problems but also the path following problem.
Design/methodology/approach
The control problem is solved based on the kinematic model of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Next, a dynamic compensation controller is considered through of a quadcopter-inner-loop system to independently track four velocity commands: forward, lateral, up/downward and heading rate. Stability and robustness of the whole control system are proved through the Lyapunov’s method. To evaluate the controller’s performance, a multi-user application which allows bilateral communication between a ground station and the Phantom 3 PRO quadrotor is developed.
Findings
The performance of the proposed unified controller is shown through real experiments for the different motion control objectives: point stabilization, trajectory tracking and path following. The experiments confirm the capability of the unified controller to solve different motion problems by an adequate selection of the control references.
Originality/value
This work proposes the design of three types of motion controllers, which can be switched to comply a task in outdoor. Based on the software development kit provided by the company DJI, an application to get and send data to the UAV is developed. By means of this application, the three tasks are tested and the robustness of the controllers is proved.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Corporación Ecuatoriana para el Desarrollo de la Investigación y Academia – CEDIA for financing the research, development and innovation, through the CEPRA projects, especially the project CEPRA-XI-2017-06; Control Coordinado Multi-operador aplicado a un robot Manipulador Aéreo. The authors also thank Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE, Universidad Técnica de Ambato, Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo, Universidad Nacional de Chimborazo and Grupo de Investigación en Automatización, Robótica y Sistemas Inteligentes, GI-ARSI, for their support to develop this paper.
Citation
Andaluz, V.H., Gallardo, C.M., Chicaiza, F.A., Carvajal, C.P., Morales, J., Cuzco, G., Morales, V., Vaca, B.E. and Samaniego, N. (2018), "Robot nonlinear control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’ multitasking", Assembly Automation, Vol. 38 No. 5, pp. 645-660. https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-02-2018-036
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited