Rapid Development and Deployment of Adaptive Control for Quadrotor UAVs

This work presents the design process and a testing platform for the rapid development and deployment of control algorithms for Quadrotors. Adaptive control is employed to deal with the problem of parameter variations during payload handling by quadrotors. The platform consists of a gyroscope device, a computer, the open-source flight controller Pixhawk, and MATLAB software, enabling single-degree-of-freedom movement of a quadrotor to analyze control systems. The design and development procedures for two types of controllers are presented: PID control and Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC). Following validation via MATLAB simulations and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing, these control algorithms are implemented on the actual controller. A detailed description of the system's model, as well as its hardware and software configurations, is provided. The control performance of PID and MRAC method is evaluated and compared through experimental tests.