Control and Simulation of Morphing Quadcopter
Abstract
In this project, a custom morphing quadcopter was designed to execute autonomous missions with changes in its geometry during the flight. The quadcopter will be completely independent so that pilot do not need take it over unless there are some unpredicted accidents. In the flight mission, the quadcopter can hover and reach several specific locations due to the capacity of its onboard flight controller. Commands to change its physical structure during the autonomous flights were given to fly through a narrow channel or a confined space. Real time processing and a robotic system are configured on board, which can collect real time flight data to analyze performance of the flight with morphing. It is necessary to make onboard flight controller, sensors and other critical avionics functional and compatible. Additionally, the stability of the physical structure and hardware need to be optimized by balancing the airframe, modeling with symmetry, and calibrating onboard avionics. Thus, the quadcopter can achieve complicated autonomous flight and be given high level commands, such as autonomous landing and changes in geometry. Several kinds of missions based on normal and morphing configurations were conducted to test flight performance in a real environment. Comparisons between normal and morphing quadcopter based on different kinds of collected data will be made in order to quantify the performances of the morphing quadcopter. In summary, asymmetric changes in the geometry of the quadcopter result in changes in the moment of inertia about the perpendicular axis as well as in a corresponding change in the torques generated, directly affecting the controllability, stability, and performance of the quadcopter. Simulated results and experimental flight data have both shown that it is possible to maintain stability of the quadcopter platform by using a traditional PID controller while flying waypoints missions, which incorporates morphed geometry in flight (conventional X to narrow X and back).
- Publication:
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Masters Thesis
- Pub Date:
- 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017MsT.........62B
- Keywords:
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- Aerospace engineering