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Successive Loop Closure Based Controller Design for an Autonomous

Quadrotor Vehicle

Article  in  Applied Mechanics and Materials · December 2013

DOI: 10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.483.361

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Applied Mechanics and Materials Vol. 483 (2014) pp 361-367
© (2014) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland
doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.483.361

Successive Loop Closure Based Controller Design for

an Autonomous Quadrotor Vehicle

Ansu Man Singh1,, Deok Jin Lee2, , Dong Pyo Hong3 and Kil To Chong4,*
1,4
School of Electronics Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Jeonbuk, 561-756, South
Korea
2
School of Mechanical & Automotive Engineering, Kunsan National University, Gunsan, Jeonbuk,
573-701, South Korea
3
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Jeonbuk, 561-756, South
Korea
Corresponding author, * kitchong@jbnu.ac.kr

Keywords: Quadrotor Vehicle, Successive Loop Closure, Self-Tuning PID Controller, Flying Robot.

Abstract. In this paper, a new systematic approach for designing a self-tuning controller for an
autonomous quadrotor robot is introduced. In order to design the self-tuning controller, first, a
linearized dynamic model of a quadrotor about hovering positions is derived, and then the successive
loop closure approach is applied to design the self-tuning PID controller of the attitude, altitude and
velocity for the autonomous flying capability of the flying robot. In addition, nonlinearities of the
design model are also imposed in the control loop by taking into account the saturation of actuators.
For the verification of the effectiveness of the proposed controller, various simulation studies are
carried out in terms of the accuracy and robustness.

Introduction
A quadrotor flying vehicle is a class of a multi-rotor helicopter which has an agile vertical take-off
and landing capability with controlling four rotors attached to its body. The main advantage of the
rotary aerial vehicle comes from the capabilities of vertical take-off and landing and hovering within
small area compared to fixed wing aerial vehicles. These features make it suitable for applications like
search and rescue, and surveillance [1]. Similarly, due to high thrust to weight ratio, it can support
heavier payloads. In additions, with the improvements in sensing technology, specifically in GPS,
accelerometer and gyroscope, extreme maneuverability and agility can be achieved [2].
Since the introduction of quadrotors in the robotics community, various linear and nonlinear
control methods have been studied for the quadrotors. Nonlinear control methods have the advantages
of increased response time, simpler implementation, and efficient control inputs. The nonlinear
control methods include feedback linearization, sliding mode, and integral backstepping control
technique [3]. In addition, there are some comparison studies introduced with respect to feedback
linearization and sliding mode [4-5], where it was shown that sliding mode performs better in the
presence of disturbances and uncertainty. Besides nonlinear methods, adaptive control methods, such
as fuzzy, neural network, are also applied in quadrotor [6,7]. While, linear control methods are well
established in control field and there are many studies applied in quadrotors [7-9]. In [8], proportional
Integral and Derivative (PID) and linear quadratic (LQ) controllers are adopted to stabilize the attitude
of a quadrotor, where the performance of PID is better even in the presence of small noise, and
parameter uncertainties.
When it comes to designing a PID controller, tuning gains of the PID controllers are the important
aspects in control system design. There are many methodologies which are well suited for the job,
such as, Dahlin PID controller, Ziegler-Nichols criterion method [10], a successive loop closure based
approach [11], etc. However, there are no formal analysis and comparison studies regarding the
self-tuning PID controller approaches in the literature up to now. Therefore, in this paper, from

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362 Mechanical Engineering, Materials and Energy III

considering the requirements of studying the self-tuning controllers, a new systematic approach for
designing a self-tuning controller for an autonomous quadrotor robot is introduced. In order to design
the self-tuning controller, first, a linearized dynamic model of a quadrotor about hovering positions is
derived, and then the successive loop closure approach is applied to design the self-tuning PID
controller of the attitude, altitude and velocity for the autonomous flying capability of the flying robot.
In addition, nonlinearities of the design model are also imposed in the control loop by taking into
account the saturation of actuators. For the verification of the effectiveness of the proposed controller,
various simulation studies are carried out in terms of the accuracy and robustness.
This paper is arranged in following fashion. First, dynamic modeling of a quadrotor is presented in
Section 2. In section 3, the derivation of the linearized model and a self-tuning controller design are
introduced. Finally, simulation studies of the self-tuning control loops are presented in section4 and
conclusion in section 5, respectively.

Dynamic Modeling of Quadrotor Vehicle

A quadrotor flying vehicle is an under actuated dynamic system which is controlled by four rotors
attached to its body (see Fig, 1). Body reference frame, B, of the quadrotor is attached to its center of
gravity. Front and right rotors lies at the positive x and y axis of the body frame, respectively.

Fig. 1 Top view of the quadrotor and coordinate system

The quadrotor is completely described by the 12 states. The first six states describe the translational
motion, i.e., pn , pe , and pd represent position in inertial frame, and u , v , and w denote the velocity
terms along x, y, and z axes of B, respectively. The remaining six variables describe rotational
motions, and φ , θ and ψ are called Euler angles, and, p , q , and r are the angular velocity vectors
along x, y, and z axes of B. The thrust ( F∗ , where ∗ = f , b, r and l ) and moment ( M ∗ ,where ∗ = f , b, r
and l ) produced by the rotors can be related in term of their angular speed ( ω ) as F∗ = k1ω 2 and
M ∗ = k2ω 2 , respectively. Torques τ φ , τ θ , and τψ along x, y, and z , the thrust ( F ) along z axis of B
can be related to ω as

F  ω 2f   k1 k1 k1 k1 
   2  0 −lk
τ φ  = M ωr   1 0 lk1 
 2 , where M = (1)
τ θ  ω  lk1 0 − lk 0 
   b 
1

τψ  ω 2   − k 2 k 2 − k2 k 2 
 l 
where l is the length of arm of the quadrotor. The equations describing the kinematic of the quadrotor
are given in (2) and (3).
 Applied Mechanics and Materials Vol. 483 363

 p
n  u  cθ cψ sφ sθ cφ − cφ sψ cφ cθ cψ + sφ sψ 
 p
 = R(φ ,θ ,ψ ) v  , where R(φ , θ ,ψ ) =  cθ sψ sφ sθ sψ + cφ cψ cφ sθ sψ − sφ cψ  (2)
 e   
 p
d  w   − sθ sφ cθ cφ cθ 

 φ
 1 sφ tθ cφ tθ   p 

 
θ  = 0 cφ − sφ  q  (3)
ψ
 0 sφ cθ cφ cθ  r 
 
The dynamic equations derived are listed in(4) and (5) (For detail follow[9,11]).

u
 rv − qw   − g sin θ   0 

v
 =  pw − ru  +  g cos θ sin φ  +  0 
1
(4)
      m 
w
 qu − pv  gcos θ cos φ   − F 

 1 
 J pqr + τ φ 
Jx 
 p
 
q
 = J pr + 1 τ 

   q θ (5)
 Jy 
r

 1 
 J r pq + τψ 
 J z 
where J p = ( J y − J z / J x ) , J q = ( J z − J x / J y ) , J r = ( J x − J y / J z ) , and J x , J y and J z are the
moment of inertia about x, y, and z of B.

Fig. 2 Controller architecture for the quadrotor robot

Successive Loop Closure Based Controller Design

In order to design a controller, (2) to (5) are simplified by assuming that roll, pitch, and heading angles
are operated within a small angle, and the Coriolis terms are small, i.e. pq = pr = qr ≈ 0 . These
approximations lead to the following equations

F
pd = g −


(6)
m

u
  − g 0  θ 
v
 =  0 g  φ  (7)
    
In order to control attitude, i.e. φ , θ , and ψ angles, altitude and velocity, a cascaded multi-loop
control architecture is propposed as shown in Fig. 2, and it consists of three control loops which
364 Mechanical Engineering, Materials and Energy III

utilize a PID controller in each control loop. Attitude controllers generates τ φ ,τ θ and τψ actuator
signals, whereas, altitude controller generates required thrust for the system. The velocity control loop
takes inputs of the desired speed commands and generates the desired attitude angle command,
i.e. φcmd , θ cmd , andψ cmd .

Attitude controller
In this section, a successive loop closure approach is illustrated in order to design the attitude
controller for stabilizing the roll angle of the quadrotor. First, the control law is designed by

τ φ = K pφ eφ − K dφφ
+ K iφ ∫ eφ dt (8)
where, eφ = φdes (t ) − φ (t ) , K pφ is proportional gain, K dφ is derivative gain, and K iφ the gain of
integrator. Then. a closed loop system in the form of a transfer function is derived by

φ ( s) K pφ s + K iφ
= (9)
φdes ( s ) J x s + K dφ s 2 + K pφ s + K iφ
3

In the roll control loop, in order to calculate K pφ and K dφ , the integrator term is discarded, that is,
K iφ = 0 is assumed. Then the transfer function of the system is given by

φ ( s) K pφ / J x
= 2 (10)
φdes ( s ) s + ( K dφ / J x ) s + K pφ / J x
Now (11) can be compared with a second-order system with the following transfer function

ωn
(11)
s + 2ζωn s + ωn2
2

where ωn and ζ are the natural frequency and damping ratio of the system, respectively. Now, based
upon the performance requirements of the system, i.e., over shoot and rise time and after calculating
ωn and ζ , the gains K pφ and K dφ are obtained by comparing (10) and (11). It is noted that saturation
of the actuator affects the performance of the system. In this case, the value of K pφ can be selected in
such a way that it does not saturates the actuator for maximum step input. In other words, at t = 0 and
for step φdes input, the output of proportional controller becomes K pφdes = τ φ (max) . Also, K dφ as
K dφ = 2ζωn could be calculated and ωn = K p / J x . Finally, the value of K i is selected from the root
locus plot of the system. The value is selected in such a way that there is very small changes in
damping ratio, i.e, ζ ≈ 0.9 . The similar procedures for designing controllers for the pitch and yaw
angles could be used.

Altitude and velocity controller

The linearized and simplified model used in altitude control loop is given by (6). Let us define a new
variable for altitude as h = − pd and the input to the system as F = F / m − g then (6) can be written as
h

= F . Now, the following control law could be proposed

F = K ph eh + K ih ∫ eh dt − K dh h
(13)
Then, the transfer function of altitude control loop is calculated by
H ( s) K ph + K ih s
= 3 (14)
H d ( s ) s + K dh s 2 + K ph s + K ih
 Applied Mechanics and Materials Vol. 483 365

Using the similar approach used in the previous attitude control, the gains of K ph , K dh , and K ih could
be calculated. However, for the implementing into the real dynamics, i.e. (6), the following control
law is designed by F = mF + mg . Using the root locus technique, the gains K p , K i and K d are 11.44,
0.107 and 6.08, respectively. Now, the speed control loop is the outer-most loop and consists of
velocity controllers along the x and y axis of B. Using linearized equations relating velocities with roll
φ and pitch θ angles in (7), a proportional control law is proposed with the transfer function by

K ∗v g
H ( s) = (15)
s + K∗v g
This can be compared with the first-order system, α / ( s + α ) . According to a successive loop closure
method, the bandwidth of the outer loop should be smaller than the inner loop. Hence, the bandwidth
of the velocity loop is approximately equal to one fifth of the inner loop, 2πα = 2π K pv / g ≈ ωn / 5 ,
where ωn is natural frequency of the inner loop.

Simulation Results
The proposed SLC based controller is tested and compared with the PID controller designed from
Simulink toolbox. In addition, the effects due to the saturation of actuator are also investigated. For a
realistic simulation analysis, the following physical parameters of the quadrotor are adopted; the mass,
m = 0.7 kg , the length, l = 0.275kg , I x = I y = 0.1063kg ⋅ m2 , I z = 0.2122kg ⋅ m 2 . The gain values
computed from the proposed SLC approach are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Summary of the control gains from the SLC approach

Control Loop
Roll, (φ ) 11.43 1.98 0.01
Pitch , (θ ) 11.43 1.98 0.01
Yaw, (ψ ) 2.04 1.18 0.01
Altitude ( h ) 11.44 6.08 0.10
Velocity along X of B (u ) 0.1512
Velocity along Y of B (v ) 0.1512

Fig. 3 Step responses : (left) Roll, Pitch, and Yaw control, (right) altitude and velocity control.
366 Mechanical Engineering, Materials and Energy III

Fig. 4 Self-Tuning performance comparison between the SLC approach and Simulink toolbox

Simulation results of the attitude, altitude, and velocity control loops using the linear model are
given in Fig. 3. It is shown that the settling time of the control loops are less than 2 sec with no
overshoot. It is also seen that since the inertia for quadrotor about z axis is greater than other axes (see
Table 1), the response of the yaw control loop is in a slower side.
In the simulation results of velocity and altitude control loops, the settling time of the loops is
about 2 sec, which is greater than their respective inner loops, i.e., roll and pitch, respectively. This
indicates that their bandwidths are greater than those of their inner loops. We tested the controller in
the loop with a saturated actuator and compared the results obtained from both the SLC control loops
and the Simulink toolbox. Comparison of the step responses and actuator signals are presented in Fig.
4. The performance obtained from the toolbox is degraded when saturating actuator is introduced in
the loop, and this is because the nonlinearities imposed by the actuators was not taken into account.
Finally, Fig. 5 shows the performance of the SLC controllers that was applied in nonlinear dynamic
model, i.e. (2) to (5). From the results it is clear that the performance of the controller is also satisfied.

Fig. 5 Simulaton results of the SLC controllers with nonlinear dynamic model

Conclusions
In this paper, a systematic and analytic approach for designing self-tuning PID controllers for
attitude and altitude control of a quadrotor robot is proposed. A hybrid nested multi-loop control
architecture for the control of attitude, altitude, and velocity of the quadrotor is designed, where each
loop utilizes the successive loop closure approach in order to calculate the control gains of each
controller. In oder to take into account nonlinearities of the dynamic model, the saturation effects of
 Applied Mechanics and Materials Vol. 483 367

actuators are considered within the control loops. The successive loop closure based controllers were
tested with both linear and nonlinear models along with saturating actuators. Simulation results show
that the SLC based controllers give better performance within the operating range with small
overshoot, compared to the controller whose gains were obtained by using the Root-locus technique.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by
Korean Government (MEST) (No. 2013-009458), (No. 2013-025087) & (No. 20110031060), and
also by Business for Cooperative R&D between Industry, Academy, and Research Institute funded
Korea Small and Medium Business Administration in 2013 (No. C0122596).

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