Control of unmanned aerial vehicles using self tuning fuzzy PID

In this study, control of a quadcopter style unmanned aerial vehicle with four-rotor, four degrees of freedom (x, θ, φ ve ψ) and capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) is performed in a simulated environment both with the PID controller designed according to the Ziegler-Nichols method and the self tuning fuzzy PID controller. The outputs of the fuzzy controller which has the error and error derivative as inputs are designed to adjust the proportional, integral and derivative (K
p
, K
i
, K
d
) coefficients of the PID controller. The membership values of the fuzzy logic controller are determined by the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method. The fitness function of the particle swarm optimization is selected as Integral Absolute Error (IAE). Finally, the designed controllers are evaluated and the results obtained are compared.