Design of a quadrocopter with PID-controlled fail-safe algorithm

Oleg V. Baranov
+, Nikolay V. Smirnov, Tatyana E. Smirnova, and Yefim V. Zholobov
 

St. Petersburg State University, Peterhof, St. Petersburg 198504 Russia
{o.baranov, n.v.smirnov, t.smirnova}@spbu.ru, st062550@student.spbu.ru

 

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are used in various fields of human activity. Unfortunately, they often fall into various emergency situations. In special cases (expensive equipment on board the copter, important information, etc.) it is important to provide a fail-safe landing. In this article, we consider two problems. First of all, we propose an approach of choosing a hardware configuration of a quadrocopter, which provide a possibility to solve emergency landing problems. The main target performance characteristics for such a device are substantiated. The calculation methodology takes into account the choice of commercially available components with the required characteristics. To realize this approach, the eCalc software was used. The second problem considered in this article is a control problem of automatic emergency landing with only two of four engines working. For this purpose, we propose a mathematical model describing the quadrocopter movement in emergency situations. This model use a PID controller to control the working engines. Numerical experiment is carried out to prove the efficiency of this approach. For implementation the MATLAB package was used.

Keywords: quadrocopter, UAV, fail-safe, control

 

+: Corresponding author: Oleg Vladimirovich Baranov
D. 27, ul. Tsentral’naya, d. Gostilitsy, Lomonosovskiy r-n, obl. Leningradskaya, 188520, Russian Federation
Tel: +7 904 602 03 99

 

Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA), Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 23-33, June 2020 [pdf]


Received: February 20, 2020; Accepted: June 2, 2020; Published: June 30, 2020
DOI:10.22667/JOWUA.2020.06.30.023