E105

A. Emami
Winter 2021
1/14/21
HO #9
Quadrotor Case Study

Quadrotors are a popular platform for unmanned aerial vehicle research, due to the simplicity of
construction and maintenance, ability to hover, vertical take off and landing capability, and the
ease of updating the flight control software. As a result, the sophistication is in the software not
hardware. The vehicle consists of four rotors, with two pairs of counter-rotating, fixed-pitch
blades located at the four corners of the aircraft, an example of which is shown in Figure 1.
Applications include aerial photography and video, surveillance, security, inspections, search and
rescue, package delivery, farming, and defense (see Chapters 2 and 10 of FPE8e).

Figure 1. Mikrokopter Quadrotor.

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 Flight Control of the Quadrotor

Attitude Control

Each rotor produces both a thrust and torque about its center of rotation. The front and rear rotors
turn likewise (usually counter clockwise, CCW) while the left and right rotors turn the opposite
way (clockwise, CW) in order to cancel the torques.

To pitch up thrust in the front rotor is increased in a certain quantity while thrust in the rear rotor
is decreased in the same quantity. By doing so a pitch moment is created while keeping global
thrust and torque unchanged. Roll control is performed in a similar manner, increasing thrust in
one of the side rotors and decreasing in the other. Yaw control is achieved by breaking the
balance of torques. For example, to yaw to the right, thrust and therefore torque are reduced in
the rotors rotating clockwise and increased in those rotating counter clockwise. This is done in
such a way that the global thrust remains unchanged.

Translation Control

From a steady hovering condition, to move vertically thrust is modified by an equal amount in
the four rotors. To move horizontally a certain pitch angle has to be reached and maintained. In
steady, horizontal flight the quadrotor keeps a negative pitch angle so that there is a horizontal
component of thrust.

Figure 2. Definition of the control inputs (left), and the body reference frame and measured
outputs (right).

The six transfer functions for the Mikrokopter identified from flight experiments are:

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 𝑎𝑧 1.2498(𝑠 + 0.3451)
𝐺𝑐𝑜𝑙 = =
𝑢𝑐𝑜𝑙 (𝑠 + 16.49)(𝑠 + 5.309)(𝑠 + 1.933)

𝑟 0.077646(𝑠 + 5.475)(𝑠 − 0.2086)

𝐺𝑦𝑎𝑤 = =
𝑢𝑝𝑒𝑑 (𝑠 + 11.03)(𝑠 2 + 0.2838𝑠 + 0.06947)

𝑞 0.22016(𝑠 + 0.2579)(𝑠 − 0.2596)

𝑢𝑙𝑜𝑛 (𝑠 + 1.865)(𝑠 2 − 1.285𝑠 + 8.067)
𝐺𝑙𝑜𝑛 = [ 𝑎𝑥 ]=
−0.011659(𝑠 − 3.271)(𝑠 + 3.681)
𝑢𝑙𝑜𝑛 [ (𝑠 + 1.865)(𝑠 2 − 1.285𝑠 + 8.067) ]

𝑝 −0.20194(𝑠 2 + 0.09235𝑠 + 0.2532)

𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡 (𝑠 + 1.82)(𝑠 2 − 1.388𝑠 + 10.02)
𝐺𝑙𝑎𝑡 = [ 𝑎𝑦 ]=
−0.00359(𝑠 − 9.182)(𝑠 + 4.164)
𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡 [ (𝑠 + 1.82)(𝑠 2 − 1.388𝑠 + 10.02) ]

p = roll rate, q = pitch rate, r = yaw rate, ax, ay, and az are the measurements of the components
of the acceleration of the quadrotor along the three body axes.

ucol is the collective control input for the vertical (up and down) motion. ulon, and ulat control the
longitudinal and lateral motion of the quadrotor.

The outputs provided by the inertial sensors are ax, ay, az, p, q, and r.

Reference:

M. Bergamasco, M. Lovera, “Identification of Linear Models for the Dynamics of a Hovering

Quadrotor,’’ IEEE Trans. Control Systems Technology, Vol. 22, No. 5, pp. 1696-1707,
September 2014.