Development of a Trajectory Generation and Tracking Control System for a Quadrotor UAV

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the development of a trajectory generation and trajectory tracking control system for a quadrotor UAV. The trajectory generation algorithm generates minimum snap trajectories which minimizes effort for actuation of motors, and the geometric control based trajectory tracking controller is utilized for tracking given trajectories precisely. The trajectory tracking controller generates a thrust command and angular rate commands for an inner-loop angular rate controller. To identify flight control performance, we developed a quadrotor platform and carried out flight experiments using circle and figure 8 trajectories. The flight experiment results show that the quadrotor UAV precisely follows the commanded trajectories in real flight environments.