Modeling, Estimation and Attitude Control of an Octorotor Using PID and L1 Adaptive Control Techniques

Abstract: A multirotor is a type of aerial vehicle that has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. Multirotors have found applications in a variety of different fields and they are used by scientists and researchers, commercial UAV companies and radio control enthusiasts alike. In this thesis a multirotor with eight rotors, also called an octorotor, is used. A physical model of the octorotor has been developed using theory from rigid body mechanics and aerodynamics. The unknown parameters in this model have been found using several identification experiments. The model has been used for controller design and comparison in a simulation environment. An attitude estimation algorithm has been designed and implemented on the target hardware. The algorithm is referred to as a nonlinear complementary filter and it uses a quaternion rotation representation and onboard measurements to compute an estimate of the current aircraft attitude. Two different attitude controllers have been designed and evaluated. The first controller is based on PID techniques which are commonly used in multirotor flight stabilization systems. The second controller uses a novel control structure based on L1 adaptive control techniques. A baseline attitude PD controller is augmented with an L1 adaptive controller in the rate feedback loop. The two controller structures are compared using a simulation environment based on the developed model of the octorotor. The results show that the proposed structure gives a notable performance increase with respect to robustness against modeling errors and input disturbance rejection compared to the PID controller. However, the L1 adaptive controller is more complex to implement and gives less noise attenuation. The PID controller has been implemented on the platform's hardware and initial flight tests have been performed with promising results.