Development of a low cost quadrotor platform for swarm experiments

Edwin Davis, Ben E. Nizette, Changbin Yu

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

    7 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The goal of this work was to develop an aerial platform which facilitates the experimental testing of swarm and formation control algorithms. A sub-$500 carbon fibre quadrotor was designed and fitted with the open source ArdupilotMega 2.0 avionics and commercial off the shelf electronics. The quadrotors were controlled from a desktop computer running the Robot Operating System (ROS) software environment and using a Vicon motion capture system for position feedback. To facilitate the computer control, a serial interface was developed utilising a conventional 2.4GHz radio control and Arduino board. Controllers were implemented and tuned to facilitate control over position or velocity/position hybrid trajectories. Using a MATLAB interface, the complete platform has been demonstrated with three quadrotors flying simultaneously. It was found that a single quadrotor is able to hover at a desired position with a mean offset of 6cm and standard deviation of 2cm.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 32nd Chinese Control Conference, CCC 2013
    PublisherIEEE Computer Society
    Pages7072-7077
    Number of pages6
    ISBN (Print)9789881563835
    Publication statusPublished - 18 Oct 2013
    Event32nd Chinese Control Conference, CCC 2013 - Xi'an, China
    Duration: 26 Jul 201328 Jul 2013

    Publication series

    NameChinese Control Conference, CCC
    ISSN (Print)1934-1768
    ISSN (Electronic)2161-2927

    Conference

    Conference32nd Chinese Control Conference, CCC 2013
    Country/TerritoryChina
    CityXi'an
    Period26/07/1328/07/13

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Development of a low cost quadrotor platform for swarm experiments'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this