Qualitative Evaluation of Flight Controller Performances for Autonomous Quadrotors

The paper regards to benchmarking and qualitative evaluation of different autonomous quadrotor flight controllers. Three characteristic representatives of frequently used flight control techniques are considered: PID, backstepping and fuzzy. The paper aims to contribute to the objective assessment of quadrotor control performances with respect to the criteria regarding to dynamic performances, trajectory tracking precision, energy efficiency and control robustness upon stochastic internal and/or external perturbation. Qualitative evaluation of the closed-loop system performance should enable the best choice of microcopter control structure. Non-linear modeling, control and numerical simulation of two characteristic flight test-scenarios (indoor as well as outdoor) are described in the paper, too. Obtained simulation results for three representative control algorithms are graphically and table presented, analyzed and discussed.

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