Abstract
This work presents a fused-PID (FPID) control strategy for a tilt-quadrotor VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) where the FPID generates attitude setpoints based on the pilot’s velocity commands. The FPID controller consists of two separate PID controllers where one can handle fixed-wing aircraft and the other is designed for multicopters. The output of both controllers is fused depending on the airspeed to obtain an attitude setpoint and a tilt angle of the rotors. In contrast to the commonly-used binary switch between helicopter flight (propellers pointing upwards) and airplane flight (propellers pointing forwards), the FPID makes a smooth transition between the two flight modes possible. The proposed controller design has been extensively tested in simulation and with a real radio-controlled tilt-quadrotor VTOL aircraft. The results presented in this work clearly show that the FPID approach, despite its simplicity, is suited very well for tilt-rotor VTOL aircraft.
Leonard Bauersfeld
PhD Student
My research interests lie in the combination of classical methods and machine learning methods for modeling, perception-aware control, and vision-based state estimation for autonomous aerial vehicles.