Real-Time Attitude Stabilization of a Mini-UAV Quad-rotor Using Motor Speed Feedback

A real-time attitude stabilization control scheme is proposed for the efficient performance of a mini-UAV Quad-Rotor. Brushless DC (BLDC) motor speed sensing is performed by reflective sensors in order to obtain a robust stabilization of the vehicle in hovering mode both indoor and outdoor. The speed measurement has the advantage of introducing this state information directly in the closed loop control which should be very useful for achieving robust stabilization of the mini-UAV. Furthermore a stabilizing control strategy based on Control Lyapunov Function (CLF) is proposed. The control scheme contains two control loops. The inner loop is devoted to control the motors speed while the outer loop is devoted to control the attitude stabilization of a mini-UAV. Assuming that the motors can be considered as a disturbance of the system, then by the standard singular perturbation theory, we may conclude that the system is asymptotically stable. Finally, to verify the satisfactory performance of proposed embedded controller, simulations and experimental results of speed sensing feedback in BLDC motors of the Quad-rotor aircraft in the presence of disturbances are presented.