Project Description:

   The University of Central Florida (UCF) Robotics Laboratory has built an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to compete in the International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC). Named the Banshee, the platform is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) quad-rotor vehicle capable of autonomous flight over a 3 km path. Both the vehicle and the flight controls are original designs created by a team of multi-disciplinary students from the University. The innovation of the vehicle design can also be seen in graphical block format in which the controls of the system were programmed. This document serves an overview of the current design approach and briefly discusses the plan for achieving level IV behavior by the 2008 IARC.

uuu Guidance and Control:

  Motion tracking for a quad-rotor aerial vehicle is a challenging control problem. Although quad-rotors feature more rotors than classical helicopters, they are of a simpler mechanical design, as the latter require a tilting mechanism to orient the main rotor to adjust pitch and roll, which is more simply accomplished for quad-rotors, using differential lift on pairs of rotors. This simplified mechanical design however puts the onus on the control system to provide levels of agility and maneuverability comparable to that of classical helicopters. The difficulties in controlling the motion of a quad-rotor UAV arise from several factors. In particular, the interaction of the air flows generated by the four rotors contributes to complex aerodynamic forces affecting the vehicle's motion. The system's dynamics are not only nonlinear, but also difficult to satisfactorily characterize, due to the complexity of the system's aerodynamic properties.   Solving the considered tracking problem required derivation of a novel adaptive control algorithm. The control strategy consists in using the four motors to control the vehicle's altitude and orientation, and then set appropriate desired orientations leading to the desired horizontal displacement. What follows is a brief description of the control algorithm, which solves the attitude and altitude control problem for the considered quad-rotor vehicle.

Electrical and Sensors:

  A custom interface board was created to interface to the different processing and control systems. The control is done on a Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processor (DSP) F2812, or more formally the TMS320C2812. A 900 MHz Maxstream wireless modem is used for basestation communiction. A PicoPic is used for creating the RC signal for the brushless motor control drivers and a Rabbit 2000 MCU performs data routing and conditioning. A MicroStrain 3DM-3X1 is the IMU which is used for all orientation information using its built in filtering technology.

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Scott Stickler
  Team Lead, Structures and Frame Design
  Undergraduate, Mechanical Engineering

Justin Key
  Basestation, GPS Integration, GUI
  Graduate, Computer Engineering

Gary Stein
  Vision, Simulation, Electronics, Software interface
  Ph.D. Student, Computer Engineering

Yannick Morel
  Control System
  Ph.D. Student, Aerospace Engineering

Dr. Leonessa
  Faculty Advisor
  Ph.D., Aerospace Engineering