Implementation of Simulink controller design on Iris+ quadrotor

Abstract

The thesis has two primary objectives. First, it develops a high-fidelity 6DOF flight dynamics model of a multi-copter UAV, and uses it for the design and implementation of the linear attitude controller onboard of an industrial quadcopter; both steps are implemented in Simulink. Second, it leverages the weakly joint efforts of MathWorks and the open-source community to build a software setup that enables rapid control software prototyping. This software architecture enables control system design and integration without the need for proficiency in embedded coding that typically utilizes high-level programming languages like C/C++. The higher impact of the dual objective is in advancing methods and tools of verifiable control system design and the embedded code generation that simplifies the V&V process. The 3DR Iris+ quadrotor, equipped with PX4 Pixhawk autopilot, is selected as the primary prototyping platform. The autopilot allows for the real-time execution of an application (attitude controller) that is auto-generated from MatLab/Simulink. This makes the Iris+ quadrotor an ideal platform for rapid flight control prototyping by using MathWork’s auto code generation capability. Ultimately, the developed setup represents a convenient research and development tool that natively bridges the gap between the safety-critical flight control science and flight experimentation technology by eliminating the error-prone manual coding of embedded microcontrollers.