Autonomous Flight of Quadcopters in the Presence of Ground Effect

Flying near the ground surface produces the ground effect which causes fluctuations in the flight dynamics of a MAV. A similar effect occurs while flying near the ceiling. In this paper, the changes on the quadcopter’s dynamic due to ground effect and ceiling effect are studied, and accordingly, a controller for regulating quadcopter’s altitude in these conditions is proposed. To attain autonomous flight in a GPS-denied environment, an onboard computer-vision subsystem is designed to estimate velocity and relative position of the quadcopter. A fuzzy logic controller is designed and implemented in both simulations and real-world to control the altitude of the quadcopter. The results show that this nonlinear controller has higher performance in comparison to classic controllers.