Flying Car Controller

In this project I have implemented a Cascade PID Drone Controller and tested for multiple scenarios as described below:

Rubric

Task	Status
Implemented body rate control in C++.	Implemented in lines 111-115
Implement roll pitch control in C++.	Lines 146-163
Implement altitude controller in C++.	Lines 194-209
Implement lateral position control in C++.	Lines 246-267
Implement yaw control in C++.	Lines 288-302
Implement calculating the motor commands given commanded thrust and moments in C++.	Lines 78-87

Performance Metrics

1: Intro

Tuned the mass parameter so that the drone starts to hover without falling.

2: Roll/Pitch Control

In this test scenario, the drone is expected to meet following two criteria:

1. roll should be less than 0.025 radian of nominal for 0.75 seconds (3/4 of the duration of the loop)
2. roll rate should be less than 2.5 radian/sec for 0.75 seconds

The simulator prints success message:

PASS: ABS(Quad.Roll) was less than 0.025000 for at least 0.750000 seconds PASS: ABS(Quad.Omega.X) was less than 2.500000 for at least 0.750000 seconds

3:Position & Yaw Control

In this scenario, 2 Drones is expected to satisfy following constraints:

1. X position of both drones should be within 0.1 meters of the target for at least 1.25 seconds
2. Quad2 yaw should be within 0.1 of the target for at least 1 second

The simulator prints success message:

PASS: ABS(Quad2.Pos.X) was less than 0.100000 for at least 1.250000 seconds PASS: ABS(Quad2.Yaw) was less than 0.100000 for at least 1.000000 seconds

4: Robust Position Control

In this scenario, there are 3 drones which have to satisfy following constraint:

1. position error for all 3 quads should be less than 0.1 meters for at least 1.5 seconds

As the scenario is almost similar to Scenario 2 but more complex, I started with this task together with task 3 - reason being if the controller can work as PID, it would be better than PD controller. With lots of repetitions, I selected following controllers which seem to work:

1. Altitude Controller: This was made as PID controller.
2. Yaw Controller: A simple Propotional controller seems to do the job.
3. Lateral Position Controller: This is also a PID controller.

The output of the tuning can be seen in this video:

PASS: ABS(Quad2.PosFollowErr) was less than 0.250000 for at least 3.000000 seconds

5: Trajectory Control

In this test scenario, the drone is expected to meet following two criteria:

1. position error of the quad should be less than 0.25 meters for at least 3 seconds