OPTIMAL PID CONTROLLER BASED AUTOPILOT DESIGN AND SYSTEM MODELLING FOR SMALL UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE

The Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller is often considered for an old fashion technique. However, from the early 1910’s it has been deeply penetrated in many control applications. The impressive history of PID controllers and experiences gained from their wide-broad control applications assign to emphasize that it is still a promising solution in a given set of control applications. Most of the commercial autopilots available for use unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) aboard must be hand-tuned when it is installed in the UAV. This requires a welltrained, experienced UAV operator, or, ground maintenance staff able to set the PID controller parameters proper to given UAV flight mission and proper for the flight conditions during the entire flight time. The early commercial-off-the-shelves (COTS) UAV autopilots used the PID controller to steer the UAV. Recently, the PID controller is not forgotten, and, there is an intensive spread and deep penetration of the PID controllers applied for UAV automatic flight control. The purpose of the author is to highlight the control problem of the PID controller tuning, and, to introduce a new enhanced PI controller. The MATLAB scripts are created by the author supporting controller parameters’ tuning activity of the UAV operators, or of the ground maintenance staff to minimize time required, and to maximize readiness of the UAV for flights.