How to cite:
Hrishitva patel. (2022). Design and Testing of a Pid Controller on a
Parrot Minidrone. Journal of Eduvest. Vol 2(9): Page 1943-1954
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2775-3727
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Eduvest – Journal of Universal Studies
Volume 2 Number 9, September, 2022
p- ISSN 2775-3735 - e-ISSN 2775-3727
DESIGN AND TESTING OF A PID CONTROLLER ON A PARROT
MINIDRONE
ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on quadcopter control design and uses the
Simulink Support Package for Parrot Minidrones to test
various control approaches. This project's goal is to bridge
the knowledge gap between control design and
implementation, making it simpler to comprehend the
fundamental ideas of control theory. Obtaining a dynamic
model of the quadcopter, linearizing the system around an
equilibrium point, designing PID controller on the linearized
system, and then verifying the controllers on the non-linear
model using simulations and test flights with the actual drone
are the key components of this research. The tuned controllers
are validated by trajectory tracking, setpoint regulation, and
disturbance rejection.
KEYWORDS
Quadcopter, Parrot Drone, Support Package, PID, Simulink
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
INTRODUCTION
A quadcopter features four revolving propellers. To provide lift, these
rotating propellers are employed. Essentially four motors and six degrees of
freedom make up quadcopters (Pérez et al., 2014). Three of these six degrees of
freedom are for rotational motion and three are for translational motion.
Quadcopters are a type of rotorcraft that can fly independently with very little
assistance from humans thanks to a highly developed control system that makes
them incredibly stable. (MATLAB) (Prayitno et al., 2018).
There are two different setups for quadcopters: plus configuration and
cross configuration. This division is based on direction and flight. Both
Hrishitva patel
Design and Testing of a Pid Controller on a Parrot Minidrone
1944
arrangements employ oblique motors spinning in the same direction. Plus
arrangement employs two motors to produce roll and pitch motions, whereas cross
configuration uses all four rotors (Schaub & Junkins, 2003). This is the difference
between the two (Gopalakrishnan, 2016).
Figure 1. Configuration of motors
Quadcopters have four motors and six degrees of freedom (3 translational
and 3 rotational). Quadcopters do not have an actuator for every motion. So, with
6-DOF and only four independent actuators, quadcopters are underactuated. We
require it to have a six degree of freedom by using four actuators. To achieve 6-
DOF, rotational and translational motions are coupled. (Fiaz, 2015) (H. Schaub a
J. Junkins, 2003) (Tamayo et al., 2018)(Zhang et al., 2014), (Zouaoui et al., 2019).
RESEARCH METHOD
The following universal model presumptions are offered from various
literature and research publications. Although different assumptions were used to
simplify mathematical equations, these equations nonetheless produce plausible
outcomes.
The four identical rotors of the quadcopter are used to control it.
A quadcopter's structure is stiff and symmetrical, and its inertial matrix is
diagonal.
The origin is where the centre of gravity is located.
The square of the rotor's speed determines the drag and thrust coefficients.
The mass stays constant because the properties of the system are time
invariant.
Aerodynamic effects, including blade flutter, can be disregarded. (Musa,
2018) (Zhang, 2014)
In his investigation, Sabatino used the intricate quadrotor model. In order to
assess the vectors in various frames, this model uses transformation matrices and
the Newton-Euler equation for 3D motion. In this method, quadrotor equations of
motion were developed using the link between force and moment balance.
(Sabtino, 2015)
Rotation matrix is used to convert the velocities from body frame to inertial
frame.
Eduvest – Journal of Universal Studies
Volume 2, Number 9 , September, 2022
1945
http://eduvest.greenvest.co.id
Similarly, transformation matrix T is used to convert angular velocities
from body frame to inertial frame
We can change a vector from a body frame to an inertial frame by
applying the Transport theorem. The expression for forces and moments around
an inertial frame is obtained. It is written as follows:
“If the body-fixed frame is rotating with rotation vector
, then for any vector,
,
/
in the inertial frame is”:
So, by using this theorem the forces in inertial frame are given as;
Similarly, by using the transport theorem for momentum about the inertial
frame we get
Using the rotation matrix given above, we can determine the forces and
moments in a fixed frame for the body. The propeller forces produced by a
quadrotor's standard configuration always point in the direction of the body
frame's z-axis. Similar to how all thrust differential torques are centred on the x, y,
and z axes of the body frame. The following is a simple way to express the
quadrotor's weight in an inertial frame.
The components of weight in body frame can be found by using rotation
matrix:
Simplifying, we have:
The complete dynamic model of the quadrotor is given as:
Hrishitva patel
Design and Testing of a Pid Controller on a Parrot Minidrone
1946
For input modelling, angular velocity approach is used. In this approach,
the inputs are the angular velocities of the rotors. The input model is as follows
The matrices A and B of the linearized state-space model of the
quadcopter is given as:
Eduvest – Journal of Universal Studies
Volume 2, Number 9 , September, 2022
1947
http://eduvest.greenvest.co.id
Pid Control On A Parrot Minidrone
MIT created the Simulink Support Package for Parrot Mini-drones.
Programs for unique flight control systems are created using it. As long as the
inputs and outputs of the FCS block remain the identical, this package allows us
to replace the quadcopter's control part while maintaining all of the drone's
standard operational features. Any control system we develop is incorporated into
the FCS block and communicates with the other firmware components of the
mini-drone. The Simulink model is shown in the figure down below.
Hrishitva patel
Design and Testing of a Pid Controller on a Parrot Minidrone
1948
Figure 2. Flight Simulation Model in Simulink
The sensor block simulates the noise and dynamics of the four sensors that
are on our mini drone. The drone has a pressure sensor and ultrasound sensor to
measure altitude, an IMU to measure attitude relative to gravity and a camera that
senses the horizontal motion by using image processing (Babu et al., 2017). The
sensor readings are passed on to the flight control system. But we don’t need
pressure readings or IMU readings rather we need to know the altitude and
attitude of the drone. So, there must be an additional logic that converts all of the
measured states coming from the sensors into the control states needed by the
controller. We will call this block the state estimator block (Delansnay &
Wouwer, 2022).
Flight Control System block generates the error. It consists of a PID
controller. This block is auto coded and loaded onto the mini drone. It has three
inputs reference commands, sensor reading and image processing data. Reference
command is usually moved into the flight code. There are two outputs motor
speeds and stop flag. Stop flag is used for safety protection (Gopalakrishnan,
2017).
The output from the FCS block are motor commands (that are obtained by
conversion of the altitude and attitude signals by using motor mixing algorithm)
and are played through the plant the airframe dynamics. We can choose between
linear and non-linear model (Schaub & Junkins, 2003).
We are aware that non-linear models are excellent for simulations, but we
do not want any non-linearities in our system for control design or linear analysis.
We require a linear model to tune our six PID controllers, even though it is
obviously less accurate than the non-linear model (Kadhim & Abdulsadda, 2022).
We currently have a collection of non-linear models wrapped around a
collection of flight code that will be put onto the small drone in the main model.
Therefore, in addition to linearizing the flight software, all other subsystems must
also be linearized in order to have a linear model of the entire system. As a result,
Eduvest – Journal of Universal Studies
Volume 2, Number 9 , September, 2022
1949
http://eduvest.greenvest.co.id
we create an entirely new paradigm for control design devoid of non-linearities.
Once we have that simplified model, we can utilise Simulink's PID tuner
programme to get the updated controller gains (Merheb et al., 2017).
Since the altitude controller is not connected to any other loops, we will
just tune it first. We set the reference instructions for roll, pitch, and yaw to zero
to ensure that they are totally excluded from the calculation. Remove these
subsystems since we are assuming that state estimation and sensor dynamics have
no impact on the control architecture (Musa & Basir, 2021). So, in essence, we are
going to presumptively know exactly what the drone's true altitude is thanks to
our controller. We are left with a linear airframe model, constant environment
subsystem, motor mixing method, and our altitude controller with RPY
commands set to zero after the non-linearities have been eliminated. To verify our
presumptions, we will test the controller on the non-linear model after we have
tuned It (Noordin et al., 2022).
Figure 3. Model for Altitude Controller Tuning
We use a PID block to handle the derivative and apply additional filtering
because the lack of sensor data or estimators implies we lack a genuine rate state.
Since there are no sensors involved in this model, the derivative of the altitude
signal is quite clean, meaning that there is no noise present. The auto-tune is then
used to adjust this block (Okasha et al., 2022a).
Figure 4. Altitude Controller
We can now see that the control logic for our altitude controller is fairly
straightforward. The altitude is measured and contrasted with a reference altitude
of 0.7m. The feed-forward gravity term is then added after the mistake has been
supplied into the PID controller. To put it simply, this term increases the amount
of thrust needed to offset the weight so that the PID controller just needs to
increase positive or negative thrust to move up or down (Okasha et al., 2022b).
Hrishitva patel
Design and Testing of a Pid Controller on a Parrot Minidrone
1950
We will now use the same process to adjust the other PID controllers after
we have tuned the altitude controller. The roll pitch and altitude commands for the
yaw controller are both set to 0. After yaw, we will tune roll and pitch
individually before moving to the outer loop, keeping the inner loop controllers
active and maintaining the drone's orientation (Tamayo et al., 2018).
The attitude controller is given as follows. The logic is simple. It serves as
the inner loop for the XY-position controller i.e., the output from the position
controller serves as the reference for roll and pitch attitudes and is compared with
the estimated states.
Figure 5. Attitude Controller
Yaw controller is given below. The reference is compared to the estimated
yaw state to generate the error term which then passes through a PD controller.
Figure 6. Yaw Controller
The XY position controller is given below. It serves as the outer loop for
the roll/pitch controller as told earlier. Rest of the logic is same as used in the
linear controller. One thing that was not in the linear controller is that this
controller is also taking into consideration the yaw orientation of the drone since it
will affect in which direction X and Y axis are and thus the movement of the
drone in those directions.
Figure 7. Position Controller
Eduvest – Journal of Universal Studies
Volume 2, Number 9 , September, 2022
1951
http://eduvest.greenvest.co.id
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
For a bandwidth of 5 rad/s and phase margin of 60 degrees the following
response is generated.
Figure 8. Linear response of tuned altitude controller
We can see that the linear response of the tuned altitude controller shows
no overshoot. But we have to test these controller gains on the non-linear model
first for verification. The response using the tuned PID on the non-linear model is
as follows.
Figure 9. Non-linear response of tuned altitude controller
In a similar way, the other controllers are tuned and simulation is done on
a three-dimensional trajectory. The reference that is given to the drone in XYZ
space is that the drone has to hover at an altitude of 0.7m. Then at time t=10s a
step input of 1m is given in x-direction and then at time t=20s another step input
of 1m is given in the y-direction.
The simulation shows that the system hovers slightly above 0.7 meters and
there are little deviations from the height it is maintaining when it has to move in
x and y directions which makes sense because when a quadrotor moves in lateral
or longitudinal axes the thrust of two propellers increase and two propellers
decrease. This change in thrust can make the drone lose and gain altitude. The
response in x and y directions is shown by the blue plots one respectively. Now,
one thing to consider here is that the origin in XY-plane is taken as (57, 95). The
simulations show adequate response. Both settles in around 3 seconds.
Hrishitva patel
Design and Testing of a Pid Controller on a Parrot Minidrone
1952
Figure 10. Non-linear x,y and z responses of tuned PID controller
The change in pitch and roll attitudes to produce the required lateral and
longitudinal motions can be seen in the following figures blue and red
respectively. The quadrotor pitches negatively to produce a positive motion in X-
direction and after it has tracked the reference it has to pitch in the opposite
direction to bring it back to level. Similar response is produced by the rolling
motion except the direction as positive roll produces motion in positive y-
direction. The quadrotor does not yaw throughout its trajectory.
Figure 11. Roll, pitch, and yaw angle
The response for translation in x and y axis, and the velocities are shown
below. At 10 seconds, the velocity in x-direction increases as the drone moves in
x- direction which then decreases and becomes zero when the drone reaches 1m in
x direction. Similarly, the velocity of y is increased as the drone moves in y-
direction which then decreases and becomes zero when drone reaches 1m in y-
Eduvest – Journal of Universal Studies
Volume 2, Number 9 , September, 2022
1953
http://eduvest.greenvest.co.id
direction. The response in XY-plane is almost same as predicted by the
simulations.
Figure 12. Translation in x, y axis their rates and velocity
The altitude response for all the sensors is given below. The response of
pressure and sonar sensor is very noisy. But Kalman filter is able to make
adequate prediction of state. The estimate of altitude from Kalman filter is not
noisy. The Kalman filter follows the response closely.
.
Figure 13. Altitude results
CONCLUSION
In this paper, mathematical model for quadcopter dynamics is obtained by
using Newton’s Second law. Angular velocity approach is used for input
dynamics. The mathematical model for quadrotor dynamics is linearized. Then
Simulink support package for parrot mini drone is studied. The non-linear model
for parrot mini drone is modified to derive the controllers. Non- linear model is
linearized to obtain the gain of PID controller. The verification is done by using
the same gains on the non-linear model and testing the simulations in the virtual
reality environment and then on actual hardware. Validation is done by comparing
the results of simulation and actual flight data.
Hrishitva patel
Design and Testing of a Pid Controller on a Parrot Minidrone
1954
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