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A Visual Interface Tool for Development of Quadrotor Control Strategies

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Abstract

Quadrotor control is an exciting research area due to its inherent non-linearity, the variety of tasks to be performed, and the wide scope of control strategies. Despite several works have been published, some aspects must be considered before implementation: How a quadrotor will operate in challenging trajectories, how to define trajectory limits, or how changing the device size will affect its performance. A complete user-friendly development platform is presented, where any device may be tested just by setting a few parameters. Typing a set of waypoints and their corresponding times, the tool calculates the optimal trajectory with minimum snap. For the defined waypoints, the control gains are tuned for a chosen control strategy using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Three control strategies are available, but the tool was developed in modular form and opened to others. After tuned the gains the control performance may be visually evaluated through a graphical user interface (GUI). The quadrotor model considers the effect of air drag and propellers’ speed dynamics. Measurement noise and limits for propeller speeds were also considered. Results demonstrate how this tool helps to initiate undergraduate and beginner graduate students in this research area, testing new control strategies, defining limits in challenging trajectories, and determining quadrotor characteristics for specific applications. The tool is available in GitHub (Martins and Rendón 2019).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank CNPq which funded this research through Scientific Initiation graduate scholarships.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Federal University of Juiz de Fora - UFJF, Faculty of Engineering room 4274/07, Juiz de Fora, MG, Brazil

      Manuel A. Rendón

    2. Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro - PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

      Felipe F. Martins

    3. Federal University of Juiz de Fora - UFJF, Juiz de Fora, Brazil

      Luis Gustavo Ganimi

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    1. Manuel A. Rendón
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    2. Felipe F. Martins
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    3. Luis Gustavo Ganimi
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    Correspondence to Manuel A. Rendón.

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    Manuel A. Rendón and Felipe F. Martins contributed equally to this work.

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    Rendón, M.A., Martins, F.F. & Ganimi, L.G. A Visual Interface Tool for Development of Quadrotor Control Strategies. J Intell Robot Syst 100, 1509–1526 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-019-01142-7

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