Fractional Order Flight Control of Quadrotor UAS: an OS4 Benchmark Environment and a Case Study

The OS4 quadrotor is a classic quadrotor simulation platform. So far, many different kinds of controllers have been designed based on its plant model. Most of the research only provided a numerical simulation to verify their designed controllers. Only a few researches have put the proposed controllers back to OS4 quadrotor to verify, but they didn't share the project folder to let others continue their work. More open-source and well-documented codes are needed to accelerate the application of fractional order controllers in industry. This paper updated the OS4 folder for the latest MATLAB version. A case of study demonstrated the workflow to design a fractional order proportional derivative controller for the simulated drone. Comparisons showed that fractional order controllers perform better in a nonlinear system like OS4 than integer order PID controllers. An impulse disturbance scenario is also used as a testbed. Project folder can be accessed from: https://ww2.mathworks.cn/matlabcentral/fileexchange/67882-os4-foc. Related videos can be found from this link: https://youtu.be/heuz4tFqf64.