Performance evaluation of a PID and a fuzzy PID controllers designed for controlling a simulated quad copter rotational dynamics model

Abstract EN

This work is concerned with designing two types of controllers, a PID and a Fuzzy PID, to be used for flying and stabilizing a quadcopter.

The designed controllers have been tuned, tested, and compared using two performance indices which are the Integral Square Error (ISE) and the Integral Absolute Error (IAE), and also some response characteristics like the rise time, overshoot, settling time, and the steady state error.

To try and test the controllers, a quadcopter mathematical model has been developed.

The model concentrated on the rotational dynamics of the quadcopter, i.e.

the roll, pitch, and yaw variables.

The work has been simulated with “MATLAB”.

To make testing the simulated model and the controllers more realistic, the testing signals have been applied by a user through a joystick interfaced to the computer.

The results obtained indicated a general superiority in performance for the Fuzzy PID controller over the PID controller used in this work.

This conclusion is based by the following figures: lesser ISA for the roll, pitch, and yaw consequently, lesser IAE for the roll, pitch, and yaw consequently, lesser rise time and settling time for the roll and pitch consequently, and lesser settling time for the yaw.

Moreover, the FPID gave zero overshoot versus , , and in the PID case for the roll, pitch, and yaw consequently.

Both controllers gave zero steady state error with close rise times for the yaw.

This superiority of the FPID controller is gained as the fuzzy part of it continuously and online adapts the parameters of the PID part.