Published by : International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)

[Link] ISSN: 2278-0181

Vol. 8 Issue 12, December-2019

Controlling Quadcopter Altitude using

PID-Control System

Ayele Terefe Bayisa 1 Geng Li-Hui 2

Tianjin Key Laboratory of Information sensing Tianjin Key Laboratory of Information sensing
and Intelligent control and Intelligent control
School of Automation and Electrical Enginering School of Automation and Electrical Enginering
Tianjin University of Technology and Education, Tianjin University of Technology and Education,
Tianjin 300222,[Link]. Tianjin 300222,[Link]:

Abstract— This work presents the stabilization of a quadcopter II. RELATED WORK
by using PID controllers to regulate its four basic movements:
roll, pitch, yaw angles, and altitude. The quadcopter was In order to weaken the effect of wind gusts, some authors have
originally equipped with sensors and software to estimate and proposed complicated control techniques to achieve stability.
control the quadcopter’s orientation, but did not estimate the In the literatures [7, 8] adaptive controllers of different
current position. A GPS module, GPS antenna and a lidar have structures were verified by simulations and experiments on
been added to measure the position in three dimensions. Filters test bench. For control of a multirotor aircraft, Salazar et al.
have been implemented and developed to estimate the position, [9] proposed a novel mathematical model of the wind gusts
velocity and acceleration. The position controller maintains a
and designed a simple nonlinear control law to resist the wind
constant position, while the trajectory controller maintains a
constant velocity while travelling along a straight line. These
disturbance. The effect of wind disturbance was discussed
position and trajectory controllers calculate the reference angles towards the issue of (unmanned air vehicle) UAV path
required to direct the thrust necessary to control the planning in the literatures [10, 11]. From the analysis,
quadcopter’s movement. The system also consists of IMU compensation control for the aircraft may be an effective
(Inertial Measurement Unit) which consists of accelerometer method. Dong et al. [12] designed a flight controller with
and gyro sensors to determine the system orientation and speed disturbance observer (DOB) to guarantee the high-
control of four motors to enable the quadcopter fly. Simulations performance trajectory tracking of a quadrotor. The DOB-
analysis of quadcopter is carried out using MATLAB Simulink. based controller is robust to wind gusts without the use of high
control gain or extensive computational power.
Keywords—Quadcopter, altitude control, PID-controller.
In the past years there has been increasing interest in
I. INTRODUCTION Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Among different UAVs,
A quadcopter is the most popular configuration of multirotor quadrotors are of special interest in control from both
unmanned aerial robot, extensively for civilian applications theoretical and applied perspectives [13–19]. The quadrotor
[1,2]. In recent years, significant growth of interest is dynamics involve challenges such as parametric uncertainties,
witnessed towards the academic research of the quadrotor. non-linearity, coupling and external disturbances [16–19]. A
This is possibly attributed to their certain features, such as high-performance attitude control is a prerequisite for
simple mechanical structure, hovering, and agile developing any other high-level control tasks [14,18]. In
maneuverability. With the increasing requirement of practical applications, the attitude of an UAV is automatically
autonomous flight under different conditions, control of the stabilized via an on-board controller and its position is
quadrotor is an important challenge. generally controlled by an operator through a remote-control
system [19].
Complex rotation and translation operations are also
commonly encountered in the mathematical model, resulting In its motion, quadcopter have three main factors: roll, pitch
in complex equations that have to be taken into account when and yaw. Based on the roll, pitch and yaw, state estimation of
designing control laws. On the other hand, the position quadrotors attitude model is challenging. The rotors are
control and attitude control of the quadrotor are extremely directed upwards and placed in a square formation with equal
sensitive to external disturbance, such as wind gusts. distance from the center of mass of quadrotor. In the early
Particularly, robustness issues may be critical for the control days of flight, quadrotors were seen as possible solutions to
of quadrotor since they are subjected to the complicated some of the persistent problems in vertical flight. The Euler
dynamics and external disturbances. Several proper control angle are three angles introduced by Leonhard Euler, which
methodologies for the quadrotor have been reported in the used to describe the orientation of a rigid body. To describe
literatures, such as proportion integration differentiation such an orientation in the 3-dimensional Euclidean space,
(PID) control [3], backstepping control [4], sliding mode three parameters are required and they can be described in
control [5], and model predictive control [6]. several ways. Using zyx Euler angle we will describe the

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[Link] ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 8 Issue 12, December-2019

orientation of a frame of reference relative to another. Euler

angle represents a sequence of three elemental rotations, since
any movement can be achieved by combining three elemental
rotations.
III. QUADROTOR DYNAMICS Where = and = .
The quadcopter’s motion is governed by the lift forces, In the case of a quadcopter, there is gyroscopic torque
produced by the rotating propeller blades, whereas the generated by the rotating propellers. However, it is
translational and rotational motions are achieved by means of relatively tiny compared to the other terms in the equation.
difference in the counter rotating blades. Specifically, the We can nullify this term for a simpler control model in the
forward motion is achieved by the difference in the lift force following design.
produced from the front and the rear rotors’ velocity, the
sideward-motion by the difference in the lift force from the (5)
two lateral rotors, whereas the yaw motion is produced by the
difference in the counter-torque between the two pairs of Divide both side by Icm, we obtain the equation for
rotors front–right and back–left. Finally, motion at the rotational dynamics.
perpendicular axis is produced by the total rotor thrust. The
model of the quadcopter utilized in this paper assumes that
the structure is rigid and symmetrical, the center of gravity
and the body-fixed frame (BFF) origin coincide, the - (6)
propellers are rigid and the thrust and drag forces are
proportional to the square of propeller’s speed.

Based on (5) and (6), we now have the equations for the
state-space model

(7)

We define the trust and torque values as the control input of

Fig 1. Quadcopter structure and frames configuration state space model

The body frame is fixed on the quadcopter. The origin is in

the center of mass of the quadcopter, while Z axis Z B is
pointing vertically upward and the X axis XB is pointing to
[Link] on this frame system, we define the translational
position as [X Y Z]T and the angular position as [φ θ ψ]T
First let us define the elementary rotations about X, Y and Z (8)
axis. Where Jr is the rotor inertia and ωr = ω2 + ω4 - ω1 - ω3

(1) IV. PARAMETER SPECIFICATION

Parameters values units

m 0.25 kg

g 9.81 m/s2
(2)
l 0.25 m

0.019688 Kg.m2

0.01961 Kg.m2
(3)
0.03938 Kg.m2
For , it means a single rotation of φ radius around X
b 31.3*10-5 Nms2
axis. Column 1, 2, 3 refers to the expression of the unit
vectors of and in the inertial frame E. Similarly, d 7.5*10-7 Nms2
Table 1. Parameters value
and can be interpreted in this way.
Finally, we can obtain the rotation matrix of the body frame
relative to inertial frame:

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V. PID CONTROLLER
PID stands for Proportional, Integral, Derivative, it’s part of
a flight controller software that reads the data from sensors
and calculates how fast the motors should spin in order to
retain the desired rotation speed of the quadcopter.
The goal of the PID controller is to correct the “error’’,
the difference between a measured value (gyro sensor
measurement), and a desired set-point (the desired rotation
speed). The “error” can be minimized by adjusting the control
inputs in every loop, which is the speed of the motors.

O/p
I/p
Fig 4. Input and output blocks using simulink

The desired yaw rate is typically taken directly from the

following command input

Fig [Link]-controller

➢ “P” looks at present error – the further it is from the

set-point, the harder it pushes
➢ “D” is a prediction of future errors –it looks at how
fast you are approaching a set-point and counteracts P
when it is getting close to minimize overshoot
➢ “I” is the accumulation of past errors, it looks at
forces that happen over time; for example, if a
quadrotor constantly drifts away from a set-point due
to wind, it will spool up motors to counteract it
A quadcopter controller and plant system will be shown in
simulink model as shown below Fig 5. Desired yaw rate

The desired roll and pitch angles computed by the position

controller and combined with the desired altitude controller
as shown below

Fig 3. quadcopter controller and plant system.

This series of blocks of input and outputs are shown below

Fig 6. Roll and pitch angle using simulink

The angular velocity controller computes the final three

moment control inputs. Each PID block contains the
individual proportional, integrator and derivative control
shown in block diagram below

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The position and altitude of quadcopter output is shown in

figure below.

Fig 7. PID control simulink

A quadcopter dynamic block diagram is shown as the

following figure

Fig 11. Quadcopter altitude position

Fig 8. Quadcopter dynamic model simulink

The motor speed calculator limits the control inputs to the

physical motor parameters

Fig 12. PID-control Simulation diagram

Fig 9. Speed control system simulink VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
A sample plot depicting the systems response to step inputs is
In this paper, the working and implementation of pitch, roll
shown below validating the control system design and
and yaw movement of quadcopter based on PID logic
simulaion
controller is presented. Mathematical modeling of quadcopter
is done using MATLAB Simulink model. For stabilization of
quadcopter, PID logic controller was chosen. PID logic was
implemented successfully in MATLAB. A prototype of
quadcopter is build using PID logic controller embedded on
it. The working and performance of quadcopter is tested and
desired outputs were obtained using PID controller. But,
Ziegler-Nichols tuning method is more effective controller.

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