Abstract

The goal of this research was to create a robot control system that combines gyroscope and accelerometer data with vision tracking to improve aerial orientation control performance over what could be achieved with sensor data or image processing alone. There has been significant research into the function of mobile robots that can autonomously carry out a wide range of tasks across a wide range of environments. However, the full potential of these robots has yet to be realized, especially at the hobbyist level. Air based travel allows for motion capabilities far beyond that of a robot limited to ground travel alone and utilizing multiple sensor types at once can provide robots far more information about their surroundings. To this end, an aircraft orientation control system utilizing input from an accelerometer, gyroscope, and camera vision tracking was developed. The control system utilizes quaternion based vector rotation math to keep track of the aircraft’s orientation in the global frame as well as the orientation of the target object. It autonomously performs both pitch and roll self righting behavior to keep the aircraft horizontally stable and yaw adjustment to guide the aircraft towards a visual target. Additionally, a 3D vector visualization program was developed in MATLAB in order to display the calculated orientations in real time. Lastly, the control laws were implemented on a model RC aircraft’s control surfaces to demonstrate performance of the created control system.

Publication Date

7-21-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Mechanical Engineering (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Mechanical Engineering

College

Kate Gleason College of Engineering

Advisor

Kathleen Lamkin-Kennard

Advisor/Committee Member

Jason Kolodziej

Advisor/Committee Member

Ali Baheri

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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