Control platform design and experiment of a quadrotor

Quadrotor helicopter control is nowadays a hot issue in the field of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research due to its unique advantages compared with traditional helicopters. However, the complex structure and low loading ability make control platform building and control algorithm verifications very hard. To solve this problem, this paper starts with brief review of the quadrotor history after which the development of quadrotors is analyzed. The advantages of the quadrotor are narrated logically due to their inner relationship. Then, the frameworks of several famous quadrotor UAV are enumerated and the design of an autonomous quadrotor helicopter SIAQR(SIA QuadRotor) is introduced. The paper further elaborated the structure of the whole system and components of the flying robot, and the detail design of the critical subsystems is also discussed. The dynamics of the flying robot in the near hovering mode is analyzed based on Newton-Euler equation. This paper further verified the performance of the control system by implementing the PID control algorithm on the quadrotor platform. The experiments showed the efficiency of the designed control system for SIAQR. Hover flying is achieved through the above mentioned control approach, and the performance is analyzed through the data recorded onboard. At the end of this paper, a conclusion is drawn and we believe that this experimental system paves way for further research.