Attitude Tracking for a Quadrotor UAV Based on Fuzzy PID Controller

Recently, quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become one of the most interesting fields of research. Attitude control is a crucial research point and is also an important basis for the stable flight of the UAV. Therefore, it is necessary and meaningful to study the attitude tracking problem of the quadrotor UAV. Firstly, the control principle of the quadrotor UAV is described in the paper. Subsequently, the mathematical dynamic model of UAV is introduced via some basic derivation. Secondly, the overall control structure of the UAV is presented. In order to improve control performance, the fuzzy controller is used to tune the three parameters of the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller in altitude channel and attitude channel. In addition, the realization of the proposed control algorithm for the quadrotor UAV is presented in detail. Finally, the simulation test about the altitude and attitude tracking of the UAV is completed in Matlab/Simulink using PID controller and fuzzy PID controller respectively. Experimental results show that PID coupled with fuzzy control has a better tracking performance than pure PID.