Mass estimation of a quadcopter using IMU data

In this paper, an approach to estimate the mass of a quadcopter using only inertial measurements and pilot commands is presented. For this purpose, a lateral dynamic model describing the relation between the roll rate and the lateral acceleration is formulated. Due to the quadcopter's inherent instability, a controller is used to stabilize the system and the data is collected in closed loop. Under the effect of feedback and disturbances, the inertial measurements used as input and output are correlated with the disturbances, which complicates the parameter estimation. The parameters of the model are estimated using several methods. The simulation and experimental results show that the instrumental-variable method has the best potential to estimate the mass of the quadcopter in this setup.