Using a Parrot Drone to Test and Verify Different Control Strategies

Project Title

Using a Parrot Drone to Test and Verify Different Control Strategies

Project Area of Specialization Electrical/Electronic EngineeringProject Summary

A parrot drone is like any other quadcopter but with an added advantage; it allows users to modify its flight control system using Simulink, connecting via Bluetooth/Wi-Fi. The project focuses on the modeling, simulation and controller design for a Parrot drone. Using Simulink support package for parrot drones in MATLAB, simulation model and flight controller for Parrot drone will be developed. The flight controller will incorporate different control techniques including Proportional Integral Derivative (PID), Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), lead-lag compensator and Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC). C code will be generated by using the Simulink model. Using this C code, programming data will be recorded in the drone. The flight controller on the drone will be then tested in safe environments.  The project will bridge the gap between simulation and implementation of the controllers paving the way to simulate and implement more advanced controllers and highlight the difference between the performance of the different types of controllers.

Project Objectives

• Understanding the problem based on our requirements
• Modeling of the parrot drone
• Designing the controller
• Testing of the controller

Project Implementation Method

Model of the drone will be obtained. A flight controller in Simulink will be developed by using different control strategies which includes Proportional Integral Derivative (PID), Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), lead-lag compensator and Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) It will be auto coded into C code where changes can be made manually if required.  C code will be compiled into a binary file. The binary file will be loaded into the quadcopter which will be tested under safe flying conditions.

• Model of the drone will be obtained.
• A flight controller in Simulink will be developed by using different control strategies which includes Proportional Integral Derivative (PID), Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), lead-lag compensator and Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC)
• It will be auto coded into C code where changes can be made manually if required.
•  C code will be compiled into a binary file.
• The binary file will be loaded into the quadcopter which will be tested under safe flying conditions.

Benefits of the Project

This is an industrial project with applications in both private sector and strategic organizations since such aero-vehicles have the ability to hover so they can be used for aerial photography and videography, mining, forensics, marine rescue, live streaming events, agriculture, payload carrying, disaster zone mapping, search and rescue.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

We will demonstrate how we designed our controller by presenting all the MATLAB work we went through during our project. We will also give a flight demo of the drone to show how our controller works.

Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry OthersOther Industries IT Core Technology OthersOther Technologies RoboticsSustainable Development Goals Industry, Innovation and InfrastructureRequired Resources

Elapsed time in (days or weeks or month or quarter) since start of the project	Milestone	Deliverable
Month 1	Literature review	Presentation/Report
Month 2	Modelling of Parrot drone	Presentation/Report
Month 3	Controllability and observability analysis	Presentation/Report
Month 4	Simulation result for different control techniques	Demo/ Presentation/Report
Month 5	Guidance mechanism and visualization in a virtual reality based test-bed	Demo/ Presentation/Report
Month 6	Testing of controller on hardware	Demo/ Presentation/Report
Month 7	Final thesis	Presentation/Report