Modeling and Control of Aerial Robots

• Published in: Springer Handbook of Robotics pp. 1307 - 1334
• Main Authors: Mahony, Robert, Beard, Randal W., Kumar, Vijay
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 2016
• Series: Springer Handbooks
• Subjects: Fixed-wing Vehicles; Hexacopter; MEMS Microelectromechanical System (MEMS); Quadrotor Vehicle; Robotic Aerial Vehicles
• ISBN: 9783319325507; 3319325507
• ISSN: 2522-8692; 2522-8706
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-32552-1_52

Aerial robotic vehicles are becoming a core field in mobile robotics. This chapter considers some of the fundamental modelling and control architectures in the most common aerial robotic platforms; small-scale rotor vehicles such as the quadrotor, hexacopter, or helicopter, and fixed wing vehicles. In order to control such vehicles one must begin with a good but sufficiently simple dynamic model. Based on such models, physically motivated control architectures can be developed. Such algorithms require realisable target trajectories along with real-time estimates of the system state obtained from on-board sensor suite. This chapter provides a first introduction across all these subjects for the quadrotor and fixed wing aerial robotic vehicles.