Practical identification and flatness based control of a terrestrial quadrotor

Nowadays a great interest focuses on UAV and particularly on quadrotor platforms. Its mechanical simplicity and stability in flight has contributed to its commercial success. However the energy consumption remains a major technological limitation and its usual flight autonomy is only 15 to 20 minutes. More and more platforms deriving from that concept come out. For example terrestrial quadrotors have already appeared on the market. They can move on the ground to save energy and fly to avoid obstacles. It is proposed in this paper to study control laws for one particular design of terrestrial quadrotor. A terrestrial dynamic model of the system is first presented and then validated by an identification process relying on results recorded by an experimental platform also described in the present document. In addition, some first experimental results of xy-plane trajectory tracking control laws based on a flatness approach are given and commented.