Month: November 2021

As the APD group work towards debugging and implementing a new control system in the Navio2 and Raspberry Pi 4, students began constructing and simulating the control system of the drone via MATLAB Simulink. The objective was to model the behavior of the drone in various scenarios. By doing, it will help students understand what specific values the PIDs within the drone are required in order for it to fly manually, and then autonomously.

Here, we have a snapshot of the overall control system of the drone. It includes default values for the roll, pitch, yaw and altitude values. All values are then fed into the summing junction, where the system will begin to calculate the error between what is desired versus what was calculated.

Here, we have a snapshot of the altitude control of the APD successfully implemented via MATLAB Simulink. The values derived from this model will eventually be utilized in the actual coding of the drone when operating manually and autonomously.

In order to determine the thrust generated by our motors to lift the drone, an apparatus attached to a load cell was used. This apparatus is pictured below.

A mount according to the manufacturer’s specifications for our motor (iFlight XING 2814 880KV) was developed to be used on the thrust measurement apparatus. The tapped holes used for connecting the motor to the mount were M3x0.5 sized holes as specified by the manufacturer and as indicated by the diagram below.

Upon completion of the motor mount, the thrust measurements could be completed. These were done by use of a flight controller and a 22.2 volt LiPo battery. Thrusts in pounds for each motor are shown in the table below. Note that values colored red were conducted at throttles that began to cause damage to the motor, the quadcopter will not typically operate at such levels.

22.2 v battery	Thrust (Pounds)
Throttle	Motor 1	Motor 2	Motor 3	Motor 4
33%	0.81	1.63	1.54	1.49
50%	2.82	2.82	2.73	2.73
67%	4.14	4.1	3.92	3.92
75%	4.8	4.8	4.1	Not Tested

These thrust measurements are suitable for lifting the drone as the total thrust will be equal to about ~16 lb during upward throttle.