A QUADCOPTER WITH AUTOMATED TAKE-OFF AND LANDING ON MOBILE ROBOT PLATFORM

Abstract

In this thesis, a controller is designed for an off the shelf quadcopter to give it the ability to autonomously takeoff, hover at a given altitude, follow and land on a mobile robot platform. This is a small part of a much bigger system which is a quadcopter and a mobile robot combined fully autonomous surveillance system. This system has the ability to navigate and complete a given task without any human interaction. Different types of sensor are used to determine the position of the quadcopter in 3D space. A PID controller is implemented to keep the quadcopter at a given altitude. Different types of sensors and technologies were used to achieve our target. A discrete PID controller will be used to hold the altitude of the quadcopter. Real-time image processing is used to determine the position of the quadcopter relative to the mobile robot platform. An ideal quadcopter simulation and a 3D simulation of the task is done to understand in detail how a quadcopter works and how to controller it the way we desire. Kalman filter is used to produce accurate and precious angular data of the quadcopter. The project is separated into several parts and divided among all the members of the group. The simulation of the complete system and the implementation of the takeoff, altitude holding and landing algorithms for the test system are done by me. Determining the position of the quadcopter using image processing and design and implementation of the Mobile robot platform is done by Rathnayake R.M.K.M. Implementation of Kalman filter to be used with Gyro and accelerometer sensors and the simulation of an ideal quadcopter model in Matlab is done by S. Mithun.