Stabilization and Control of an Autonomous Quadcopter

A Quadcopter is a helicopter which has four equally spaced rotors, usually arranged at the corners of a square body. Due to four independent rotors, the need for a swashplate mechanism is palliated. The swashplate mechanism was required to allow the helicopter to utilize more degrees of freedom, but the same level of control could be obtained by adding two more rotors. The development of Quadcopter was stalled until very recently, because controlling four independent rotors was proven to be incredibly difficult and impossible without electronic assistance which has made even completely autonomous control of quadcopters feasible for commercial, military, and even hobbyist purposes. The paper offers dynamic simulation of brushless DC motor speed control used in a quadcopter and also focuses on design and implementation of PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) controller through simulation for proper controlling of altitude roll and pitch in a quadcopter. The effectiveness of proposed controller can be analyzed by considering the performances of peak time, settling time and overshoots for various set point changes in the throttle movements. All simulation studies have been carried out using the MATLAB software.