Simulation

Our simulation process began in Matlab, where we created a physics simulator that we could use for preliminary validation of our system. This consisted of our basic forces and torques, which we used to update our position and orientation each timestep. We also computed physical parameters like mass and moment of inertia based on the actual design of our drone. We then plotted the drone in real time, and determined that it was displaying expected behavior.

Uncontrolled flight (displaying axes of drone in world frame)

Controlled flight

Mathematica

• We used Mathematica as an aid for computing transfer functions, validating controller designs, and tuning parameters.
• We began by entering the equations of motion and using nsolve to analyze the system's uncontrolled behavior.
• We then expressed our system as a state-space model and found the poles.
• We implemented different controller architectures and computed the resulting poles.
• We optimized constants by simultaneously minimizing the real components of fourteen different poles.