Gain scheduling PID control of the quad-rotor helicopter

Quad-rotors have generated considerable interest in both the control community due to their complex dynamics and widely applications because of their advantages over regular air vehicles. Gain scheduling (GS) is one of the most popular approaches to nonlinear control design and it is known that GS controllers have a decent performance in many circumstances. In this paper a GS-PID control strategy approach is designed for a multivariable nonlinear unmanned aerial vehicle, a Quad-rotor Helicopter. The Quanser Qball-X4 Quad-rotor Helicopter has been introduced in this paper. The proposed design procedure is based on the parameter dependent quadratic stability approach. The class of control structure includes centralized, decentralized fixed order output feedbacks like PID controller. Simulation results carried out using a complete nonlinear model are shown, wherein the performance achieved with this control strategy is shown.