Mathematical & Physical Modelling of a Quadrotor UAV

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are now becoming a major topic of interest due to their flying capabilities attracting researchers who are working within various application. Quadrotors in particular are one of main types of UAVs that are now currently studied, where some of the main focuses are positional and attitude tracking. Currently, verifying these systems in simulation is generally processed through MATLAB/Simulink where the dynamics are thoroughly analyzed. In this paper, the results attained from the mathematical dynamics implemented in Simulink will be justified using ADAMS environment. This software was purposely developed to accurately model the dynamics of mechanical systems in 3D without considering any equations of motion. SolidWorks is used to design the quadrotor frame that satisfies the properties of the proposed system in Simulink. Setting the control inputs as angular velocity of each motor will generate a relative thrust in order for the vehicle to achieve motion. Finally, the dynamic behavior on ADAMS and Simulink are compared as the control inputs are identically applied, which has revealed a marginal difference between the resultant motions.