Trajectory Tracking of Quadrotors Using Differential Flatness and Computed Torque Control

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has recently been receiving much attention because of a wide range of potentional applications such as environmental monitoring, disaster monitoring, reconnaissance and even deliveries for online shopping. For these applications, position and attitude control is an important task. However, the challenge of position and attitude control lies in that position of quadrotor is coupled with roll, pitch and yaw motions in non-linear manner. Motion planning is also important. Because reference trajectories inconsistent with feasible motion of the quadrotor make controller design difficult and result in poor tracking performance. The objective of this thesis is to design controller for quadrotor position and at-titude motion tracking control. First, the quadrotor dynamics are modeled using reference frames, rotation matrix, force, moments, kinematics and dynamics by Euler-Newton Equation. Then, differential flatness-based motion planning is presented for reference trajectory genera-tion. Finally, PID type controller and Computed Torque Method controller are designed for po-sition and attitude control. Results are validated using MATLAB simulations.