Design and hardware-in-the-loop test of the embedded control system of an indoor quadrotor helicopter

The paper deals with the quick prototype design and hardware-in-the-loop real-time test of the embedded control system of an indoor miniature quadrotor helicopter (UAV) before first flight. The control law is of backstepping type, the sensory system consists of a marker-based vision system outside the helicopter in radio connection with the embedded controller and a 3D inertial measurement unit (IMU) on the helicopter. Extended Kalman filters solve the state estimation problem. Brushless DC motors serve as actuators. For quick prototype design of the embedded controller MATLAB, Simulink, Real-Time Workshop and the MPC555 Target Compiler were used. Because of the critical character of the control of flying systems the whole embedded control system was hardware-in-the-loop tested by using DS1103 of dSPACE for real-time emulation of the indoor helicopter. During test the helicopter and the sensors were mapped to DS1103 and the test was performed in real-time using the helicopter and sensor models. Communication during the test was running using CAN bus protocol between the Freescale MPC555 processor of the embedded controller and the emulation of the helicopter and the sensors on DS1103.