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A micro laser
Design of a low-cost mini sensor
quadrotor and altitude control
using a micro laser sensor
JeongHwan Kim 163
Department of Smart Vehicle Engineering,
Received 29 January 2019
Konkuk University, Gwangjin-gu, The Republic of Korea Revised 25 June 2019
Steven Aurecianus and Seonglok Nam Accepted 25 July 2019

Department of Aerospace Information Engineering,

Konkuk University, Gwangjin-gu, The Republic of Korea
Jungkeun Park
Department of Smart Vehicle Engineering,
Konkuk University, Gwangjin-gu, The Republic of Korea, and
Taesam Kang
Department of Aerospace Information Engineering,
Konkuk University, Gwangjin-gu, The Republic of Korea

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce a low-cost quadrotor that can be used for educational
purposes and investigate the applicability of a low-cost MEMS laser sensor for accurate altitude control.
Design/methodology/approach – A single printed circuit board is designed to form the structure of the
quadrotor. A low-cost MEMS motion sensor, a microcontroller and four small motors are mounted on
the board. A separate laser sensor module measures the altitude. A remote controller is designed to control the
quadrotor’s motion. The remote controller communicates with the quadrotor via wireless connection.
Roll and pitch attitude stabilization is achieved using the proportional and derivative control algorithm.
The applicability of an MEMS laser sensor for altitude control is also studied.
Findings – The low-cost quadrotor works well even though its body structure is made using a printed circuit
board. Low pass and Kalman filters work well for attitude estimation and control application. The laser
sensor is very accurate and good for altitude feedback; however, it has a relatively short measurement range
and its sampling rate is relatively slow, which limits its applications. The vertical velocity obtained by
differentiating the laser altitude has delay and inhibits suitable damping. Using the vertical velocity obtained
by integrating the vertical accelerometer’s output, the damping performance is improved.
Originality/value – Developing a low-cost quadrotor that can be used for educational purposes and
successfully implementing altitude control using a laser sensor and accelerometer.
Keywords Low-cost quadrotor, MEMS laser sensor, Mini quadrotor, Quadrotor control
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Currently, there are various quadrotors on the market with a wide variety of prices and
performances. Most of them are used for recreational purposes, such as video recording and
drone racing. To be considered as a quadrotor for educational purposes, especially in a
control study, several criteria should be satisfied. The program should be fully
customizable, the design should be easy to upgrade by adding external sensors or
modules, and flight data should be obtainable. Unless the quadrotor is custom-built, the
International Journal of Intelligent
program cannot usually be modified or improved by the user. The covering or frame of Unmanned Systems
Vol. 8 No. 3, 2020
pp. 163-176
© Emerald Publishing Limited
This paper was written as part of Konkuk University’s research support program for its faculty on 2049-6427
sabbatical leave in 2016. DOI 10.1108/IJIUS-01-2019-0008
IJIUS conventional quadrotors often makes it very difficult to modify the quadrotor design. The
8,3 proposed mini quadrotor is equipped with an external interface that allows additional
functions to be performed, such as navigation with GPS and addition of new sensors. The
flight data can be obtained from the quadrotor through real-time wireless data transmission.
This quadrotor can be used as a starting point for anyone to learn and develop their
quadrotor capabilities.
164 Quadrotors have been studied extensively over the past few years. Usually, flight data
are obtained using a memory card mounted on the quadrotor or using wireless data
transmission (Tayebi and McGilvray, 2006; Bouabdallah et al., 2004). While the motor
arrangement is essentially same, quadrotors come in numerous different sizes and weights
(Pounds et al., 2010; Grzonka et al., 2012; Nicol et al., 2011; Capello et al., 2012; Szafranski and
Czyba, 2011). Mathematical models and control systems have also been made with various
approaches (Firas and Rawad, 2015; Alexis et al., 2012; Raffo et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2011; Khoi
et al., 2015).
In this research, low pass and Kalman filters are used to estimate pitch and roll angles
(Siouris, 1996; Lewis, 1992). Then, proportional and derivative (PD) control is implemented
to control the attitude. The altitude is measured using a MEMS laser sensor, and the z-axis
velocity is estimated by integrating the z-axis acceleration. Both are used as feedback to
control the altitude.
To obtain flight data, a remote controller is designed. It is equipped with a transceiver so
that it can communicate with the quadrotor in both directions. Then, the remote controller
sends the data to the computer or ground station through a wired connection. A similar
method is employed in other systems, such as FW-MAV (Aurecianus et al., 2018).
The remainder of the paper is arranged as follows. In Section 2, the quadrotor design and
supporting parts are discussed. Then, the controller design is described, and experimental
results are reported in Section 3. Finally, Section 4 presents concluding remarks.

2. System structure
The system consists of three parts, as shown in Figure 1: mini quadrotor, remote controller
and monitoring computer. The system can be configured in two different modes, as also
shown in Figure 1. Figure 1(a) shows the test mode configuration, and Figure 1(b) shows the
flight mode configuration. The test mode configuration is used for the functional testing of
the quadrotor without flying it, and the quadrotor is connected to the monitoring computer
via wired serial communication. The flight mode configuration is used for flight testing.
In this mode, the quadrotor is connected to the remote controller via wireless radio
frequency (RF) communication, and the remote controller can be connected to the
monitoring computer via wired serial communication when data logging is necessary.
To keep the price of the quadrotor system as low as possible, all parts used were
obtained commercially at a low price. The material cost for the quadrotor system including
the remote controller is approximately US$34. It is hoped that the quadrotor system,
including the remote controller and monitoring software but excluding the monitoring
computer, can be supplied at a price of less than US$150.

Main body structure of the quadrotor

Plate 1 shows a picture of the quadrotor main board and RF module. The printed circuit
control board is designed to form a quadrotor with suitable size and thickness. Each arm
has a small DC motor. The control board consists of an Atmega328P microcontroller, an
MPU9250 IMU sensor with three-axis gyroscopes and three-axis accelerometers as well as
three-axis magnetometers, 5 V and 3.3 V regulators, and a field-effect transistor to drive
each of the DC motors. To ensure good transmission quality, an RF24L01+ transceiver
module is used. A 3.7 V Li-Po battery is used to power the quadrotor system. Plate 1 shows
(a) A micro laser
Monitoring
computer Quadrotor sensor

RF module
Response data 165
Each function control MCU
Test functions commands

MPU 9250

Laser sensor

Sensors data graph

(b)
Monitoring Remote
computer controller Quadrotor

Roll, pitch, yaw command RF module

RF module altitude hold mode flag

Quadrotor sensor data MCU

MCU Roll, pitch, yaw attitude
altitude, other data
MPU 9250
MPU 9250
Laser sensor

Sensors data graph

Figure 1.
Quadrotor system
structure
Notes: (a) Test mode configuration; (b) flight mode configuration

Plate 1.
Mini quadrotor main
board and RF module
IJIUS the mini quadrotor and RF module. A mini USB connector is used to upload new programs
8,3 to the microcontroller. There are also some pins for obtaining data through wire using
UART/USART communication.
The specifications of the quadrotor are listed in Table I. The weight of the main body
including the microcontroller, IMU sensor, and USB connector is 15 g, and that of the RF
extension board is 5 g. The motors are commercially available small DC motors. These
166 motors are fixed with glue, which adds a few grams to the weight. The voltage of the Li-Po
battery is 3.7 V, and its capacity is 800 mAh. The weight of the battery is 18 g.

Remote controller
The quadrotor can be controlled through a custom-made remote controller, which is shown in
Plate 2. The main components of the remote controller are an Atmega328P microcontroller,
MPU9250 IMU and RF24L01+ transceiver module. It is equipped with one joystick for throttle
command, while the pitch and roll commands are given through the motion of the remote
controller. One potentiometer is used to adjust the yaw or heading. If the yaw is stably
maintained, the pitch and roll can be controlled easily using motions detected via the IMU on
the remote controller board. The remote controller board has two buttons: one on the left for
automatic take-off command and one on the right for the altitude hold command in flight test
mode. The remote controller is also equipped with an FTDI circuit, which is used to upload
new programs to the main quadrotor or remote controller from a desktop computer through a
USB connection. The FTDI circuit converts data between the USB connection of the
monitoring computer and the RS232C connection of the microcontroller on the remote
controller board or that on the quadrotor main body. Users can modify or revise the control
software of the quadrotor or remote controller via the FTDI circuit. The USB connection is

Parameter Value Unit

Maximum diameter 185 mm

Height 20 mm
Total weight 64 g
Main body 15 g
Extension board 5 g
Table I. Motor 6 (×4) g
The quadrotor Battery 18 g
parameters Other 2 g

Plate 2.
Remote controller
also used for data communication between the monitoring computer and the quadrotor with A micro laser
the help of wireless connection between the remote controller board and quadrotor main body. sensor

Monitoring computer
The computer monitoring program was developed for educational purposes, as shown in
Figure 2. Users can test the basic functions of the quadrotor using the monitoring program.
In the test mode configuration, the monitoring computer is connected to the quadrotor 167
directly through a USB connection. Users can connect the quadrotor to the monitoring
computer by clicking the “Connect” button on the monitor display after plugging in the USB
connectors between the monitoring computer and the quadrotor. The flight mode is selected
by default when the quadrotor is turned on. If the quadrotor is turned on while it is
connected to the monitoring computer via the serial port, the test mode configuration is
started automatically. In the test mode configuration, outputs of the three-axis gyroscopes,
three-axis accelerometers, three-axis magnetometers and laser sensor are available in the
monitoring system for control applications or sensor test. Users can access the sensor data
using functions in the custom library files. In addition, the output pins of the microcontroller
can be controlled using a function in the custom library. There are also functions for
pulse-width modulation duty rate control of each motor. Thus, users can access information
on all the sensors and drive the motors or LED outputs mounted on the quadrotor.
Users can develop their own functions or control software using the functions in the
custom library within the C++ environment. After developing test software in the C++
environment and obtaining the execution file, users can execute the file in the monitoring
system using the “Program” button. There are also “LED,” “Motor,” “Attitude,” and

Figure 2.
Monitoring
computer display in
Attitude mode
IJIUS “Joystick” buttons. Using the LED, motor, attitude, and joystick modes, basic functions of
8,3 the LEDs and motors can be tested easily using graphic interfaces. The Program mode is for
users to develop their own testing or controlling software. In the LED mode, users can turn
the two LEDs on the quadrotor on and off. Further, users can blink the two LEDs, and
the blinking frequency can be adjusted by moving the sliding bars on the display in LED
mode. In the motor mode, the speed of each motor can be adjusted by moving slide bars on
168 the display. In the attitude mode, the speeds of the four motors can be controlled by moving
the roll, pitch and yaw slide bars on the display. In the joystick mode, roll and pitch
commands can be generated from the movement of a mouse.
In the flight mode configuration, the attitude and heading are controlled by the control
software in the microcontroller on the quadrotor frame. All information for the acquisition of
sensors and driving of motors is include in a custom library, and users can develop their
own control and data logging software using the functions in the custom library. The data
necessary for analysis can be transmitted to the monitoring computer and saved via the
wireless RF connection between the quadrotor and the remote controller and the wired serial
connection between the remote controller and the monitoring computer.

3. Feedback control system design

Mini quadrotor model
Figure 3 illustrates a simplified model (Tayebi and McGilvaray, 2006; Nicol et al., 2011) to
describe the dynamics of the quadrotor. Rotors M0 and M2 rotate clockwise, and rotors
M1 and M3 rotate counterclockwise. The front is between rotors M0 and M3. If the speeds of
rotors M0 and M3 are decreased and those of rotors M1 and M2 are increased, a pitch down
moment is generated. In the same way, roll moment is generated by changing the speeds of
rotors M0 and M1 and rotors M2 and M3. Heading is controlled by increasing the rotation
speeds of the one direction motors and decreasing those of the other direction motors. When
all motor speeds are decreased or increased together, the quadrotor can move vertically
down or up, respectively.

Attitude control system design

The control loop is divided into an inner and outer loop, as shown in Figure 4. We designed
the PD controller with a focus on the stability of the closed loop system (Bouabdallah et al.,
2004). A Kalman filter is used to estimate the roll and pitch angles assuming that the

CW
Roll
M0 x
CCW
CCW
M3
M1
CW Pitch
y
M2

Figure 3. z
Schematic of
the quadrotor
Yaw
quadrotor is in the near hovering condition. The information from the gyroscopes and A micro laser
accelerometers is combined using the Kalman filter to obtain an attitude estimation. The sensor
system state equation at time k can be written as:
xk þ 1 ¼ Axk þBuk þwk ; (1)

zk ¼ H xk þvk ; (2)
where xk, A, B, uk, wk, zk, H and vk are state vector, system matrix, input matrix, control 169
input, process noise, output, measurement matrix and measurement noise, respectively. The
covariances of the process noise wk and measurement noise vk are Q and R, respectively.
Assuming that the quadrotor is in the hovering condition, the state vector, system matrix,
input matrix and measurement matrix for roll angle estimation can be written as
(Aurecianus et al., 2018):
" #    
f 1 Dt Dt  
xk ¼ ;A ¼ ;B ¼ ;H ¼ 1 0 : (3)
ob 0 1 0
k

The measurement information of roll and pitch can be obtained from the accelerometer
outputs using the following relations:
2 3 2 32 3
ax cos y cos c cos y sin c  sin y 0
6 a 7 6 cos f sin y cos c cos f sin c sin f sin y sin c þ cos f cos c sin f cos y 7 6 7
4 y5¼4 54 0 5
az cos f sin y cos c þ sin f cos c cos f sin y sin c sin f sin c cos f cos y 1

2 3
sin y
6  sin f cos y 7
¼4 5; (4)
 cos f

where ax, ay and az are the acceleration along the x, y and z axes of the quadrotor,
respectively, and φ, θ, and c are roll, pitch and yaw angles, respectively. From Equation (4),
the measurement equation for roll angle is given as:
 
zk ¼ atan ay =az þvk : (5)
Thus, by applying the Kalman filter algorithm to the system of Equations (1) and (2) and
using the measurement from Equation (5), the estimated roll angle f^ can be obtained. Further,
from Equation (4), the pitch angle can be obtained using Equation (6). Thus, the Kalman filter
equation for pitch angle can be written in a similar manner to the roll angle estimation:
y ¼ asinðax Þ: (6)

p, q, r
ax, ay, az
+ Outer + Inner hx, hy, hz
Command   Quadrotor

r , r , r
PD PD
– –
+
+ bk + k

Figure 4.
p, q, r Block diagram of the

, ,  Kalman attitude control loop
filter
IJIUS Also, using the magnetometer measurement and roll and pitch angle information, the
8,3 heading angle can be obtained as:
H x ¼ hx cos yþhy sin f sin yþhz cos f sin y; (7)

H y ¼ hy cos fhz sin f; (8)

170

H y
c ¼ tan 1 ; (9)
Hx
where hx, hy and hz are the magnetometer outputs, after sensor errors are compensated,
along the x, y and z axes of the quadrotor, respectively (Ozyagcilar, 2015). Hx and Hy are the
horizontal components of the magnetometer outputs along the x and y axes of the quadrotor
after the tilt angle effects are compensated, respectively. Thus, we can write the Kalman
filter equation for heading angle similarly to that for roll using the system of Equations (1)
and (2) and the heading measurement from Equation (9). The estimation of angular rate can
be obtained by subtracting the bias estimation from the gyro output along each axis. Once
the angles and angular rates are obtained, the PD controller can be implemented by simply
multiplying the P gain to the error angle with the derivative gain to the error angular rates.
The inner PD loop is used to keep the quadrotor in the hovering condition when there are no
external inputs, and outer PD control loop is used to track inputted roll, pitch and yaw
commands. The control loop runs every 5 ms. The quadrotor is very small, so it requires a
fast control loop. The main board communicates with the remote controller every 50 ms to
obtain the input commands.

Attitude control experimental results

Figure 5 shows the pitch and roll angle responses to step-wise changing inputs. The pitch
angle follows the command very well with very small overshoot. The roll angle output is a
slightly slower and it shows a bigger overshoot and longer settling time. Figure 6
shows that the pitch and roll angles remain small over time in the hovering condition. Over
time, the roll and pitch angles remain at less than 5°. The main reason for the small
oscillations in the hovering condition is the high-frequency vibrations of the quadrotor
body. Experimentally, it is found that the bias of the MEMS accelerometer varies as
high-frequency vibration increases (Nam et al., 2018). It is expected that the performance of
the controller could be improved significantly if the mechanical vibration noise can be
removed by hardware or software.

Pitch step Roll step

5 15
Command Command
Pitch Pitch
0 10

5
–5
0
Angle (°)

Angle (°)

–10
–5
–15
–10
–20
–15
–25 –20
Figure 5.
Pitch and roll –30 –25
step responses 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time (s) Time (s)
 10
Pitch hovering
6
Roll hovering A micro laser
sensor
4

5 2
Angle (°)

Angle (°)
0
171
0 –2

–4 Figure 6.
Pitch and roll
–5 –6 responses in the
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 hovering condition
Time (s) Time (s)

Altitude controller design

A simplified equation for the altitude dynamics can be given as:

m€z ¼ bu; (10)

where m is the mass of the quadrotor and b is the input scale factor. Thus, the transfer
function G(s) from input u to altitude output z is given as:
 1
GðsÞ ¼ b=m 2 : (11)
s
The mass of the quadrotor is 64 g. The input scale factor is obtained by measuring the
thrust outputs with various inputs, as demonstrated in Plate 3. The throttle output is plotted
against the control input in Figure 7. The control input is the duty rate in % (×10).
The battery voltage also affects the throttle, but this effect is not significant when the
voltage is within a reasonable range. The average input scale factor to the unit control input
is approximately 0.117 g/(unit input), i.e. b is approximately 1.15 mN/(unit input) considering
gravitational acceleration.
Using these parameters, we designed a PD controller using the simulation block
illustrated in Figure 8.

Plate 3.
Experimental setup
for measuring input
scale factor
IJIUS 120
Thrust generated versus control input

8,3 Measured thrust

Linearized thrust
100

80
172 Thrust (g)

60

40

20

Figure 7.
Thrust generated 0
against control input 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1,000
Control input (PWM duty rate(%)(×10))

Altitude command Scope

zr (s) z(s)
+ K(s) G(s)
– Altitude output
Step input PD controller Transfer Fcn
Figure 8.
Altitude simulation
block diagram

The closed loop transfer function from the altitude command zr to real output z is given as:
      
zðsÞ GðsÞK ðsÞ b=m 1=s2 K p þK d s b=m K d s þK p
T ðsÞ9 ¼ ¼    ¼   
zr ðsÞ 1 þGðsÞK ðsÞ 1 þ b=m 1=s2 K p þK d s s2 þ b=m K d s þK p
2zon sþo2n
¼ ; (12)
s2 þ2zon sþo2n
where K(s) ¼ (K ds + Kp) is the transfer function of the PD controller, ζ is the damping ratio
and ωn is the natural frequency. The relation between band width ωb, the natural frequency
ωn, and the damping ratio ζ is given as:
 qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 1=2
ob ¼ on 12z2 þ z4 4z2 þ2 : (13)

To obtain a bandwidth of approximately 8 rad/s and a damping ratio of approximately 2.2,

kp and kd are set as 556 and 778, respectively. The natural frequency in this case is
3.16 rad/s. The frequency responses are shown in Figures 9 and 10. Figure 9 shows the open
loop frequency response of the altitude control system with the controller. It can be seen that
the gain margin is almost infinite, and the phase margin is approximately 87°, which shows
that the altitude control system has very big stability margins. Figure 10 shows that the
 Bode diagram A micro laser
100 sensor
80
Magnitude (dB)

60
40
20 173
0

–90
Phase (°)

–135
Figure 9.
Open loop frequency
response of the
–180 altitude control
10–2 10–1 100 101 102 system
Frequency (rad/s)

Bode diagram
0
Magnitude (dB)

–10

–20

–30

–40
0
Phase (°)

–45
Figure 10.
Closed loop frequency
response of the
–90 altitude control
10–1 100 101 102 103 system
Frequency (rad/s)

bandwidth obtained is approximately 8 rad/s, as expected. Figure 10 also shows that the
proposed controller will have almost no overshoot because of the high damping ratio in the
ideal case.

Altitude control results

We used a tiny VL53L0x MEMS laser sensor by ST Microelectronics. It can give an absolute
accuracy of 4 percent with a 33 ms ranging time within 120 cm. The altitude measurement
was conducted with a 20 Hz sampling rate. Experimental results show that the ranging
accuracy is sufficient. The measurement error with a range of 120 cm is less than 5 cm.
However, there is a delay of more than 33 ms, and when the derivative of the laser sensor
IJIUS output was used for derivative feedback, there was continuous oscillation in the closed loop
8,3 altitude control system. Thus, we used the integration of the accelerometer output to obtain
the vertical velocity of the quadrotor. When the output is simply integrated, the output
diverges because the offset error is integrated. To avoid this divergence, the following
transfer function was applied to the vertical acceleration output to obtain the velocity for
altitude damping:
174 1
H ðsÞ ¼ : (14)
sþ1
In other words, the velocity was obtained as:

1
vðsÞ ¼ ðav ðsÞÞ; (15)
s þ1
where av(s) is the vertical acceleration after gravitational acceleration and mean offset are
removed. In the high-frequency range, H(s) works as an integral operator, and in the
low-frequency range, it works as constant gain. To monitor the real altitude of the quadrotor
experimentally, we used a Vicon camera system, as shown in Plate 4.
Figure 11 shows the experimental results for altitude control. From 0 to 9 s, the altitude is
controlled manually. At 9 s, the automatic altitude control system is turned on. It can be seen
that the overshoot is approximately 10 cm and the undershoot is approximately 28 cm.
Considering that the sensor accuracy is approximately 5 cm, the altitude is being controlled
relatively well. The overshoot is slightly larger considering the damping ratio of 2.2. This is
due to delays from the motors and sensors. It is expected that if motor delay and sensor
delay are modeled and considered in the controller design step, overshoot and steady-state
oscillations can be reduced much more.

4. Conclusion and future works

We developed a low-cost mini quadrotor to be used for research and educational purposes. It
consists of an MEMS inertial sensor, a micro controller, four small DC motors and a remote
controller that can give commands and obtain flight information from the quadrotor.
The quadrotor is also equipped with a tiny laser sensor to measure altitude. Using the
prototype quadrotor, basic attitude and altitude controllers were implemented successfully.
Experimental results show that the roll and pitch angles are maintained within 5° in the
hovering condition. The roll input response had larger overshoot and longer settling
time compared to the pitch input response. Further research is necessary to improve the roll
response. Also, to reduce the steady-state oscillations in roll and pitch control, further
research to reduce the effect of high-frequency vibration on the attitude estimation error is
necessary. The altitude controller demonstrated a small steady-state error using
the onboard laser sensor of approximately 5 cm. Because the laser sensor has a relatively

Plate 4.
Experimental
Vicon camera
system for real
altitude monitoring
 1,000
Alitude control result A micro laser
Altitude response
sensor
900 Altitude command

800

700
175
Altitude (mm)

600 Auto mode

start
600

400

300

200
Manual Auto
100
Figure 11.
0 Experiment results of
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
altitude control
Time (s)

long-time delay of 33 ms, there was oscillation when we used the derivative of the laser
sensor for derivative control feedback. The altitude control system became stabilized
when the velocity information from the vertical accelerometer was used. Further research is
necessary to obtain vertical velocity information more accurately to make the altitude
control system faster and more stable. Moreover, it is expected that the steady-state error
and overshoot can be reduced further if the motor dynamics and sensor delay models
are included in the control system. The designed mini quadrotor is very light and small,
and the flight data, including sensor data and control output, can be monitored using an RF
transceiver at a very low cost. Users, including elementary school students, can test
and understand how the quadrotor works using the slide bars in the developed
monitoring system. Further, advanced users can even implement their own controllers
using the functions in the custom library. Thus, it is expected that the developed quadrotor
system can be widely used for education, control algorithm applications and testing in
research labs.

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Corresponding author
Taesam Kang can be contacted at: tskang@konkuk.ac.kr

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