Minimal jerk trajectory for quadrotor VTOL procedure

Abstract

Quadrotors often require high accelerations in order to surpass the lift off barrier of gravity. Most system control techniques however are driven by the rate of error, thus as the quadrotor initially moves from ground position, the error rate is very high and in turn results in aggressive counter action from normal trajectory controllers. This in turn produces jerk. The more the jerk the greater the unwanted vibration, thus increasing settling time and reducing accuracy as hover state is approached. To curb this, we propose a controllably smooth and time optimal lift off procedure to be implemented on quadrotors.