Author : Abubakar Surajo Imam and Robert Bicker

This paper presents a model predictive control (MPC) scheme for the autonomous flight control system that permits the quadrotor to track predefined bounded position and heading reference trajectories. The longitudinal and lateral velocities of the quadrotor are produced from the pitch and roll tilts of the vehicle, and therefore, the design of the flight control system feedback loops was based on this fact. The structure of the feedback law is composed of inner and outer controllers, which are responsible for lateral and longitudinal control of the quadrotor, and each of the controller utilizes the decomposed control signals comprising two feedback loops, namely, roll/pitch and yaw/altitude. In order to include the position dynamics of the quadrotor in the vehicle linear model, the control system design begins with the tracking problem of a reference translational velocity and heading profile. A flight test was conducted to verify the performance and effectiveness of the developed control system, and satisfactory results were obtained.

Keywords: Model Predictive Control, Autonomous Flight Control System, Inner and Outer Controller, Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Feedback Loops.

Article published in International Journal of Current  Engineering  and Technology, Vol.4,No.1 (Feb- 2014)