In-Lab Drone’s Attitude Maneuvering Fluency Evaluation by a Gyroscopic Lurch Index

The present paper reports on the current progress about the laboratory-based assessment of the fluency of attitude maneuvering of a quadcopter. The manuscript illustrates a laboratory-based data-acquisition setup and a mathematical data-processing algorithm to test a novel attitude maneuvering fluency estimation index termed geometric lurch. The geometric lurch index is defined in terms of angular variables’ values as returned by gyroscopic sensors that a quadcopter vehicle is equipped with. The results of several numerical tests, conducted on both synthetic and real-world gyroscopic signals, show that the geometric lurch index is fairly sensitive to the fluency of attitude maneuvering.