Control and simulation of obstacle avoidance for a quadcopter

Abstract

The high demand for Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) in today's world increases our community's safety, well-being, and sustainability. However, there are still issues to be solved. One of the problems discussed in this paper is the UAS manoeuvring in the rural area and the ability of the UAS to manoeuvre around buildings or obstacles. This study conceptualizes the control method and motion used to avoid obstacles using a PID controller and a laser scanner embedded to a quadcopter. The distance error experiment measurement shows that the error decreases with distance and expected distance error is about 4mm with a standard deviation of 0.1577mm. The laser scanner distance error and standard deviation experimental measurement applied to Matlab Simulink's avoidance controller program shows that the algorithm can avoid obstacle with a minimum clearance of 0.5m to avoid damage on the quadcopter. The PID controller design can follow a defined path with some noise present in the horizontal position due to the scanner noise and a 5% error in altitude.