Abstract:
A key class of UAS are VTOL vehicles, which afford the ability to hover and maneuver in tight spaces; often in windy and turbulent conditions. This paper presents the development and flight testing of optimized control laws for the 3DR IRIS+ quadrotor designed to aggressively hold its position in a hover while subjected to wind gusts and turbulence. Performance-based disturbance rejection requirements, such as attitude/position tracking error in turbulence and maximum position displacement for a 1-cosine gust, are directly incorporated into the flight control design and optimization process. A Control Equivalent Turbulence Input (CETI) was then used to simulate turbulence in flight and the optimized control laws allowed for the quadrotor to hold its position to within 3.5 inches, a factor of 13.5 improvement over the stock position hold controller.