ME4241 - Aircraft Performance and Stability

Course Assignment
Stability and control of quadcopter drones

Arindam Chowdhury - A0098061A

Liu Xincheng - A0094751Y
Ranger Lim Yong Shun - A0097438N
Yeo Wen Bin - A0111752R

1. Introduction
Quadcopter has a wide range of uses and is increasing adopted by many companies
and businesses to aid in their work. Companies like DHL, Amazon began testing the
use of such drones to deliver packages. Other usage of the drones are for
surveillance where it is humanly impossible. Such drones are also used in disaster
areas, mining areas, building surveillance and aircraft inspection. To perform such
tasks, it is important that the quadcopter maintain its stability throughout the
journey. This report serves to discuss the stability and control of the quadcopter.

2. Quadcopter structure
Quadcopter is a class of Unmanned Arial Vehicle. Its design is based on the design
of helicopter, but with 4 propeller to control its movement. The 4 propellers are
equally spaced from each other in a square configuration from the centre of mass.
Mechanical arms are used to join the propellers to the main body of the quadcopter.
Each propeller will be connected to a separate motor. Hence the rotational speed of
each propeller can be controlled independently.
In some more advance quadcopter, the arms have mechanical linkages that change
the orientation of the propeller. This will in turn change the thrust produced. For
simplicity, the report will not include the involvement of the movement of the arms
that affects the flight of the quadcopter.

3. Quadcopter control
As can be seen from the figure below 2 rotors rotate in a clockwise direction and 2
of them do so in counter clockwise direction. Manoeuvring the quadcopter drone
involves controlling the roll and pitch of the system through relative speeds of the
rotors. For instance, to achieve a right side roll of the aircraft, thrust produced by
motor set 1 and 4 are increased and thrust produced by motor set 2 and 3 are
decreased. Similarly to produce a forward pitch, thrust produced by motor set 2 and
4 are decreased and thrust produced by motor set 1 and 3 are increased. It is
crucial to note that a pair of motors will operate by having their power output
increased or decreased. By design within each of motor, the blades will be rotating

in opposing directions. This ensures that the net torque on the drone will remain
neutral and prevent any yaw on the system.

Apart from the control of roll and pitch, most quadcopters have 2 additional
controls: yaw and throttle. Yaw is achieved by changing the net torque on the body
of the drone. To achieve a counter-clockwise yaw, the propellers spinning in a
clockwise direction have to have their relative speeds increased as compared to
those spinning in a counter-clockwise direction. Throttle serves to control the
altitude of the drone. This is achieved by controlling the lift through an increase or
decrease in the power output of the 4 motors.
Most quadcopters available in the market today have modes that have some
degrees of autonomous flight behaviour. For instance, many quadcopters are able to
achieve self-levelling, where a disruption to the position of the drone is corrected by
itself. In essence the input from a pilot is replaced by the feedback generated by the
sensors and Global Position System (GPS) in the drone. This self-generated
information will actuate the controls within the quadcopter in the same way it is
done manually by a pilot.

4. Static stability
For stationary stability, the centre of gravity has to be under the centre of thrust of
the combined thrust produced by all four motors. From the diagram, f1 and f3
rotates counter clockwise while f2 and f4 rotates clockwise. This ensures that the
angular torque translated from the motor to the frame is cancelled out.
For different frames, there may be different stability. As the X configuration ensures
that the four motors are equally spaced from the centre of gravity, the H
configuration does not provide that. The H configuration has a less stable pitching
configuration. The quadcopter is inherently unstable as it does not correct itself. Any
correction done to the quadcopter is input through the rotors and are corrected
based on the electronics on board the quadcopter. The
To produce thrust for forward flight, the quadcopter pitches downwards by reducing
thrust on either f1 and f2 or f3 and f4 to pitch downwards. The lift produced by the
propellers are now translated into the lift force to keep the quadcopter flying and

the thrust needed for the quadcopter for forward flight. This is illustrated in the
following pictures.

The bulk of the mass of the quadcopter should be placed in the middle of the
central platform. The centre of gravity should be in the same line as the centre of
thrust, any change in centre of gravity to displace it upwards or downwards from
the centre of thrust creates a less movable quadcopter. Relating this to a moment
arm, since the moment arm is shorten, more thrust is needed to create a moment
that restores any change in moment of the quadcopter.

4.1 Safety with one propeller inoperative

During a normal flight, a quadcopter produces three independent torques to control
the attitude of pitch, roll and yaw in the axes as mentioned previously. The software
controlling the quadcopter is designed to work with all 4 motors and propellers
functional. When one or more propeller fails and become inoperative, this control is
no longer possible and the quadcopter flips around and typically crash. One of the
way to maintain normal flight with one propeller inoperative is to have redundancies
such as the case of hexacopters of octocopters. These multicopters with 6 or 8
propellers are able to remain airborne and maintain stable flight even with
inoperative propellers, making them the ideal choice for delivery vehicles due to
safety considerations. However, having these additional propellers also make them
larger, heavier and hence more complex and inefficient than quadcopters with a
reduced payload.

A control algorithm to ensure the safety and stable flight of a quadcopter with one
propeller inoperative was developed by researchers at ETH Zurich. The algorithm
which requires just the existing software of quadcopters to be updated does not
require any hardware modification or changes. The control strategy employed when
the software detects a propeller is to give up the yaw torque control and let the
quadcopter spin uncontrolled about the z axis. The quadcopter enters a continuous
rotation and the direction of the axis of rotation is then controlled by changing the
thrust of the remaining healthy propellers. Doing this allows the control of the
quadcopter acceleration and position and hence, ability to maintain safe and stable
flight.

5. Dynamic stability
Achieving dynamic stability is one of the most challenging aspect of designing a
quadcopter. As the quadcopter lack of a natural damping system, the aircraft must
be constantly stabilized by the control system. Therefore, it is important to develop
a control system that help to stabilize the quadcopter.

5.1 Orientation in 3 dimensions

To design a control system for the quadcopter, the kinematics of the quadcopter
need to be formalized in the inertial frame. This means that the flight dynamics and
control need to be transformed from the body frame to the inertial frame.
The inertial frame can be rotated to coincide with the body frame through 3 Euler
angle:

{}

{}

i
I
=[
R
][
R
][
R
]
j
J

k
K

The body rotational rates is related to the Euler angles by:

{}[

]{ }

p
sin
0
1 '
q = cossin cos 0 '
r
coscos sin 0 '

These transformations are identical to the ones in conventional aircraft.

5.2 Equation of motion

The acceleration of the quadcopter in the inertial frame is due to thrust, gravity, and
drag force:

m x =

[ ]

0
0 + RT + D
mg

Where R is the transformation matrix.

For rotational equation of motion, by Coriolis theorem:

I cg +

( I cg ) =M cg
If the quadcopter is assumed to be symmetrical about the X and Y axis, the moment
of inertia matrix can be simplified to:

I xx 0 0
I cg= 0 I yy 0
0
0 I zz

The above analysis provides a total of 9 equations, which correspond to translation,

rotation and orientation of the quadcopter. Numerical method can be conducted
using these equations to assess the stability of the quadcopter.

5.3 Control
There are many different control schemes for the quadcopter. The most common
one is a proportionalintegralderivative controller (PID controller). PID controller
calculates an error term as the difference between a measured point and the trim
point. The controller will then attempt to minimize the error by adjusting controlled
variables, in this case, the torque of the propellers.
Since each quadcopter contains 4 propellers, 4 unknown related to the propeller
torque need to be solved. However, there are only 3 equation related to the angular
velocity of the quadcopter in the X, Y and Z direction. An additional equation can be
obtained by enforcing that the thrust in the vertical direction equals to the weight of
the quadcopter. This provides a complete environment for simulating the
quadcopter control.

5.4 PID controller

There are 3 setting in the PID controller, they are Proportional Gain coefficient,
Integral Gain coefficient and Derivative Gain coefficient.
Proportional Gain coefficient controls how much power is allocated to keep the
aircraft level. A higher P setting cause the quadcopter to be more sensitive and
reactive to angular change. It can also causes the aircraft to oscillate as there is
additional power to cause the aircraft adjust over its trim point. At lower setting, the
propeller may not have enough power to adjust back to trim condition. In outdoor
environment where there are wind and other adverse effect, a higher P setting is
preferred since more propeller power is available to adjust back to trim condition.
The Integral Gain coefficient increase the precision of the angular position. A high I
value helps to counteract adverse conditions such as irregular wind and ground
effect. However, if the I value is too high, the quadcopter will have slow reaction
and start to oscillate.

The Derivative Gain Coefficient controls the tolerance of how fast the aircraft
returns to the trim point. A lower D setting allow for a greater pitch or roll before the
aircraft tries to recover. At higher D setting, the aircraft will start to oscillate.

6. Conclusion
The design of the quadcopter is based on the helicopter, with its translational and
rotational motion of the quadcopter controlled by the rotational speed of the
propellers. Due to the lack of a natural damping system, the quadcopter incorporate
many control systems to ensure the stability of the aircraft. For example, the PID
system controls how fast the aircraft return to trim condition. It also controls the
frequency of the oscillation. A safety system helps to maintain the stability of the
aircraft during one propeller inoperative condition. With the development in these
control systems, the quadcopter will become more stable and it is likely to see it
been used in many industries.