Introduction to Multicopter Design and Control

393 Pages·2017·19.83 MB·English

by  Quan Quan (auth.)

Quan Quan
Introduction to
Multicopter Design
and Control
Introduction to Multicopter Design
and Control
Quan Quan
Introduction
to Multicopter Design
and Control
123
Quan Quan
Department ofAutomatic Control
Beihang University
Beijing
China
ISBN978-981-10-3381-0 ISBN978-981-10-3382-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-3382-7
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017932434
©SpringerNatureSingaporePteLtd.2017
Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeor
part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations,recitation,broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,
andtransmissionorinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,
orbysimilarordissimilarmethodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped.
Theuseofgeneraldescriptivenames,registerednames,trademarks,servicemarks,etc.inthis
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exemptfromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse.
Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinformationin
thisbookarebelievedtobetrueandaccurateatthedateofpublication.Neitherthepublishernor
the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material
containedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.Thepublisherremains
neutralwithregardtojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmapsandinstitutionalaffiliations.
Printedonacid-freepaper
ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbySpringerNature
TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerNatureSingaporePteLtd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721,Singapore
To my parents
Preface
The flight is always the dream of mankind. The kite was invented in China,
possiblyasfar backtothefifth century.Beginningwiththelastyearsofthe
15thcentury,LeonardodaVinciwroteaboutandsketchedmanydesignsfor
flyingmachinesandmechanisms,includingornithopters,fixed-winggliders,
rotorcraft, and parachutes. On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers
invented and built the world’s first successful airplane and made the first
controlled, powered, and sustained heavier-than-air human flight. Since
1903, in the following one hundred years, many types of aircraft emerged.
However, not too many people tried to pilot and enjoy their flying. Aircraft
and pilots were still mysterious until small and micro multicopters were
approaching consumers via the Radio Controlled (RC) toy market. This
mainly duetothehugeimprovementontheuser experienceviatheirsalient
features:ease-of-use,highreliability,andeasymaintainability.Ithardlyfinds
an aircraft as simple as multicopters. They do make more and more people
reallypilotandenjoyflying.BesidesasanRCtoy,multicoptersdemonstrate
other commercial applications as drones, including surveillance, search, and
rescue missions. So far, multicopters have taken and consolidated their
dominanceinthemarketofsmallaircraft.NomatterdefinedasanRCtoyor
a drone, the multicopter is definitely an appropriate research target for stu-
dents. This is because students have a chance to experience all phases from
design to flight testing within a short time. One more reason is that students
canreadandinteractwiththeopen-sourcecodeofmulticopterstounderstand
the underline principle.
As an outcome of a course developed at Beihang University (Beijing
UniversityofAeronauticsandAstronautics,BUAA),thisbookisintendedas
a textbook or introductory guide for senior undergraduate and graduate
students, and as a self-study book for practicing engineers involved in
multicopters.Withtheintentionofcoveringmostdesignphasesonhardware
and algorithms of multicopters, it has fifteen chapters which is divided into
five parts, including multicopter airframe and propulsion system design,
modeling,perception,control,anddecision.Thisbookcanalsobeusedfora
supplementaryreadingmaterialforotherunmannedflyingsystems.Itaimsto
organize the design principles adopted in engineering practice into a disci-
pline and to emphasize the power of fundamental concepts. This book is
featured with four salient characteristics.
vii
viii Preface
(1) Basic and practical. The most contents related to multicopters are
self-contained, aiming at making this book understandable to readers
with the background of Electronic Engineering (EE). For such a pur-
pose, the components are introduced starting from their functions and
key parameters. The introduction to the design process starts with the
principle, while the modeling section starts with the theoretical
mechanics. The state estimation section starts with the measurement
principle of sensors. Before talking about the control, the notions of
stability and controllability are introduced. In addition, most of basic
and practical methods are presented. These methods are closely related
to open-source autopilots which are often used now.
(2) Comprehensive and systematic. This book hopes to give a complete
pictureofmulticoptersystemsratherthanasinglemethodortechnique.
Very often, the role of a single method or technique is not sufficient to
meettheusersrequirementsortosolveapracticalcomplexproblem.On
the other hand, improving other related methods or techniques will
reduce thedifficultyinasingle method.Forexample, theimprovement
of the state estimation performance or the mechanical structure can
avoid dealing with delay or vibration as a control problem. Through
this, some complex controller design can be avoided. For an under-
graduate student, basic knowledge has been obtained, such as mathe-
matics, aerodynamics, materials, structures, electronics, filtering, and
controlalgorithms,whichcorrespondtonumerouscourses.Thisbookis
hoped to combine them together to lay foundations for full stack
developers.
The preparation and writing of this book have suffered me a lot. Fortu-
nately, the Software and Control Lab, I stayed as a student (I have been
staying here as a faculty since 2010), started to support the research on
multicopters since about 2007. Ruifeng Zhang and I devoted ourselves to
building quadcopters then. This made me almost witness the gold develop-
ment period of small multicopters. Moreover, fortunately, public documents
are shared selflessly by developer teams of open-source autopilots, such as
APM and PX4, and numerous technique dissertations and papers are con-
tributed by scholars all over the world. More importantly, this book could
neverhavebeenwrittenwithoutthesupportandassistancefrommystudents
from BUAA ReliableFlightControl Grouphttp://rfly.buaa.edu.cn/,whichis
a part of Software and Control Lab. Deep thanks go to graduate students
Jinrui Ren, Zhiyao Zhao, Guang-Xun Du, Xunhua Dai, Zibo Wei, Heng
Deng, Dongjie Shi, Yangguang Cai, Jiang Yan, Hongxin Dong, Jianing Fu,
Zhenglong Guo, Jing Zhang, Yao Luo, Shuaiyong Zheng, Baihui Du and
Xiaowei Zhang for material preparation, chapter revision, and simulations.
IwouldliketothankmycolleagueProf.ZhiyuXi,graduatestudentsUsman
ArifandHannaTereshchenko,andundergraduatestudentKunXiaofortheir
commentsandhoursoftirelessproofreading.IwouldliketothankProf.Wei
Huo,Prof.DaweiLiatBeihangUniversity,Mr.YunYuatDJI-Innovations,
Preface ix
Dr. Liang Zhu at AVIC Information Technology Co., Ltd for providing the
valuablesuggestions.Thisbookhasbeenusedinmanuscriptforminseveral
courses at Beihang University and National University of Defense Tech-
nology,andthefeedbackfromstudentshasbeeninvaluable.Finally,Iwould
like to thank Mr. Xiang Guo for the traditional Chinese-style illustrations at
the beginning of each chapter.
Beijing, China Quan Quan
December 2016
Contents
1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Concepts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.1 Classification of Commonly Used Small
Aircraft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.2 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Model
Aircraft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Remote Control and Performance Evaluation. . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.1 Remote Control of a Multicopter . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.2 Performance Evaluation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2.3 Bottleneck. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3 History of Multicopters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.3.1 The First Stage (Before 1990): Dormancy
Period. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.3.2 The Second Stage (1990–2005): Growing
Period. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.3 The Third Stage (2005–2010): Development
Period. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.4 The Fourth Stage (2010–2013): Activity
Period. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.3.5 The Fifth Period (2013–): Booming Period . . . . 19
1.3.6 Conclusion Remark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.4 The Objective and Structure of the Book. . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.4.1 Objective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.4.2 Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Part I Design
2 Basic Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2 Airframe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2.1 Fuselage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2.2 Landing Gear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.2.3 Duct. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.3 Propulsion System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.3.1 Propeller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.3.2 Motor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
xi
xii Contents
2.3.3 Electronic Speed Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.3.4 Battery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.4 Command and Control System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.4.1 RC Transmitter and Receiver. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.4.2 Autopilot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.4.3 Ground Control Station. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.4.4 Radio Telemetry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.5 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3 Airframe Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.1 Configuration Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.1.1 Airframe Configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.1.2 Aerodynamic Configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.2 Structural Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.2.1 Design Principles of Airframe . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.2.2 Anti-Vibration Consideration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.2.3 Noise Reduction Consideration. . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.3 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4 Modeling and Evaluation of Propulsion System. . . . . . . . . . 73
4.1 Problem Formulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2 Propulsion System Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2.1 Propeller Modeling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2.2 Motor Modeling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.2.3 Electronic Speed Controller Modeling. . . . . . . . 79
4.2.4 Battery Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.3 Performance Evaluation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.3.1 Solution to Problem 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.3.2 Solution to Problem 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.3.3 Solution to Problem 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.3.4 Solution to Problem 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.4 Test Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.5 Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.6 Appendix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.6.1 Procedure to Obtain Thrust Coefficient
and Torque Coefficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.6.2 Procedure to Obtain the Motor Equivalent
Voltage and Current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Part II Modeling
5 Coordinate System and Attitude Representation . . . . . . . . . 99
5.1 Coordinate Frame. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.1.1 Right-Hand Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101