Control of a small quadrotor for swarm operation

Abstract

Small quadrotors, or so-called nanoquads, are widely available, typically have small take-off mass (between 12-50 g), and a flight time of about 5-10 minutes. The aim of this article is the proposal of control and development of the basic infrastructure for controlling a swarm nanoquads from an external computer and obtaining measurements from an onboard sensor. Control of nanoquad attitude and position is proposed and control allocation problem is addressed. Additionally, landing and collision detection is implemented using external disturbance force estimation. Results of the proposed control methods are verified in 4 scenarios: hover flight, manual control, step response, and collision and landing detection.