Quad-Rotor UAV: High-Fidelity Modeling and Nonlinear PID Control

Abstract

Quad-rotor helicopter is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), whose lift is generated by four rotors located on the corner of X-shape. Due to simplicity of its dynamics and its ability to hover, quadrotor helicopter becomes as a popular platform for UAV. Current designs mostly consider a linear model for controller design. In this paper, we derivate nonlinear dynamic equations of the quadrotor UAV for the hovering motion from basic Newton’s second law. Nonlinear Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller is proposed to control the quad-rotor UAV. This controller uses the speed and the orientation of each propeller in hovering motion of the quad-rotor UAV. A number of trajectories are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed controller.