Design, Implementation, and Flight Tests of a Feedback Linearization Controller for Multirotor UAVs

Abstract

This paper proposes a feedback-linearization-based control algorithm for multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The feedback linearization scheme is highly efficient for considering nonlinearity between the rotational and translational motion of multirotor UAVs. We also propose a dynamic equation that reflects the aerodynamic effects of the vehicles; the equation's parameters can be determined through curve fitting using actual flight data. We derive the feedback linearization controller from the proposed dynamic equation, and propose a Luenberger observer to attenuate measurement noises. The proposed algorithm is implemented using our in-house flight control computer, and we describe its implementation in detail. To investigate the performance of the proposed algorithm, we carry out two flight scenarios: the first scenario, an autonomous landing on a moving platform, is a test of maneuverability; the second, picking up and replacing an object, test the algorithm's accuracy. In these scenarios, the proposed algorithm precisely controls multirotor UAVs, and we confirm that it can be successfully applied to real flight environments.