Modelling and control of a coaxial helicopter UAV in an indoor laboratory

This paper describes the modelling, the control algorithm and the flight experiments performed with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The vehicle is a coaxial toy helicopter and the control platform is an indoor platform with a computer vision sensor. The dynamic model of the vehicle as well as the identification process of its parameters are described. The controller consists on a cascade control structure formed by trajectory, velocity and attitude control loops implemented with PID-based controllers. The experimental results show a maximum position error of 5cm on hovering experiments and exhibit a great precision in the trajectory tracking experiments.