Deployment of Model-based Design Approach for a Mini -quadcopter

Abstract

In recent years drones are becoming more popular in research and industry, due to their agility. By increasing the application of quadcopters in different fields, having a straight forward procedure to design a proper controller and deploy it on the quadcopter is worthwhile. This paper proposes the implementation of model-based design (MBD) approach for control design of a mini-quadcopter. The MBD methodology is utilized to simulate the quadcopter model with aerodynamic effects. A proper controller is designed based on the experimentally tuned simulator and then deployed on the real quadcopter with the use of Matlab/Simulink code generation capability. The experimental result derived from the test flights with harmonic trajectories validates the benefits of using the MBD methodology for control design in quadcopters.