MEMS based navigation and control of a nonlinear quadrotor with tiltable rotors

Abstract

The support of rescue forces using Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) is a challenging task which is addressed in this work. In order to fulfill this task an advanced type of MAV is being developed: A quadrotor with tiltable rotors. This vehicle is able to perform vertical takeoff and landing maneuvers as well as to control attitude and velocity independently. To achieve this goal the navigation filter fuses the information of a micro electrical mechanical system inertial measurement unit (MEMS IMU) with data provided by a laser range finder. A stochastic cloning Kalman filter is used to perform the data fusion appropriately. To control this new kind of vehicle a nonlinear controller is used. The controller is separated into a common backstepping controller and a control allocation unit. The performance of the system is demonstrated by simulations based on model identification of real sensors and hardware.