Navigation and control for an unmanned aerial vehicle

Abstract

Recent advancement in micro-electronic technology makes the development of quadrotor fully possible. This paper elaborates on the complete designing process of a quadrotor control platform. Firstly a hardware structure with a microcontroller and embedded sensors is reported. Then through the implementation of a linear complementary filter, the real-time attitude estimation of the quadrotor is realized. Furthermore, aiming at the outdoor environment navigation, a barometer and a Global Positioning System (GPS) are also integrated within this platform. A multisensory data fusion algorithm is then proposed to combine these sensors for the outdoor navigation. Finally, a group of PID controllers are designed to stabilize the attitude and position. The experiment results demonstrate the capability of this platform to navigate autonomously through user-defined waypoints.