Improving the Performance of INDI Flight Control for a Quadrotor in the Ceiling Effect
M.M. Kemmeren (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
Ewoud Smeur – Mentor (TU Delft - Control & Simulation)
C De Wagter – Mentor (TU Delft - Control & Simulation)
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Abstract
As the application areas of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) keep expanding, new flight areas are encountered more often. Small UAVs, named Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), even fly in areas like sewage pipes. These areas introduce new difficulties such as aerodynamic effects caused by the ground and/or ceiling. In this paper two main contributions are presented that deal with the aerodynamic effects caused by the ceiling: 1) an adaptive model describing the ceiling effect using onboard measurements, which can be altered to describe other aerodynamic effects that occur when flying in constrained spaces, 2) incorporating the adaptive model into an Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) controller. The controller is implemented and tested onto a MAV (Crazyflie). The results have shown stability improvements for close ceiling flight. Moreover the minimal distance the MAV can fly from the ceiling is decreased using the new controller.