On-board/off-board smooth trajectory control for quadcopters through multi-loop PID tuning

Abstract

Traditional quadcopter guidance control techniques involve calculating and responding to positional demands. Many guidance algorithms however specify an acceleration demand for the quadcopter to react to. To address this, a control system has been developed which utilises only acceleration commands for trajectory tracking. A comparison between positional control and acceleration control was undertaken, and identi ed that for such guidance algorithms, an acceleration-based model is advantageous in providing better tracking of desired trajectories generated in real-time in both simulation and hardware.