Drone Kahlo
Design
Requirements
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Hover
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Be able to follow a path of our choosing
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Our Design
We chose to really leverage PID control since it is a linear system. By implementing PID control we could really hit both of those system requirements. PID would be used to hover, and we would use a ‘carrot-on-a-stick’ method to trace a path using this same PID controller.
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Design Choices
Implementing PID into our software was fairly straightforward and effective as the drone can be modeled as a linear system. However, tuning the PID took longer than expected as we needed to experiment with the drone’s behavior with different PID values.
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Key Insights
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Our drone must be able to balance itself midair even in the presence of small disturbances. It should also be able to actuate a servo motor when it arrives at a certain point on the canvas.
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We decided to use a PID controller to stabilize the yaw, pitch, and roll of the drone since it was a linear system.
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PID was fairly easy to implement in our software but tedious to fine-tune.
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We believe our design is effective in most real engineering applications where environmental disturbances aren’t overwhelming. However, in higher altitudes or extreme weather conditions, the drone may need a more precise controller.
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