A robust but easily implementable remote control for quadrotors: Experimental acrobatic flight tests

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a simple, robust model-free control strategy enabling acrobatic flight of quadrotors, validated through experimental tests on different vehicles, even under damage conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a model-free control approach that is easy to implement and effective for acrobatic quadrotor flight without re-tuning across different vehicles.

Findings

Achieved acrobatic rate control beyond standard capabilities.

Low tracking error maintained across different quadrotors.

Control robustness persists even when quadrotors are heavily damaged.

Abstract

Experimental flight tests are reported about quadrotors UAVs via a recent model-free control (MFC) strategy, which is easily implementable. We show that it is possible to achieve acrobatic rate control of the UAV, which is beyond the previous standard. The same remote controller is tested on two physical vehicles without any re-tuning. It produces in both cases low tracking error. We show that MFC is robust even when the quadrotor is highly damaged. A video footage can be found at: https://youtu.be/wtSLalA4szc