Experimental Platform of a Physical Model for a Quadrotor Helicopter

In this paper an experimental platform, which is a flexible and open architecture, of a physical model of a quad rotor helicopter is presented. This platform consists of a block that sends data from the UAV sensors to a ground station by radio-frequency serial communication. It also has another block that receives the RF control signal from a Laptop to a controller of brush less motors. The ground station receives serial data from a RF transceiver and handled them through a Human Machine Interface which displays orientation angles data and the lifting height above the ground of the helicopter. The sensors used are a 3-axis accelerometer, a compass and an ultrasonic sensor. The actuators are four brush less motors controlled by electronic speed control cards (ESC), which receives the control commands by serial data from a RF transceiver (XBee card). The helicopter architecture allows using different software platforms for monitoring and control from a PC or Laptop. The physical model is tested using LabView and Mat lab, handling serial communication through USB ports. The platform allows implementing several control algorithms to the Quad rotor Helicopter to evaluate its performance.