Design of the flight control system of the unmanned aerial vehicle to be used for agricultural applications in Uganda

Abstract

This project was about the design of a flight control system for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to be used for agricultural applications in Uganda. It is a project under the Center for Research in Transportation Technologies at College of Engineering Design Art and Technology of Makerere University. The implementation of the project began by reviewing literature about UAV the dynamics and the different control techniques used for designing UAV control systems. The linear control technique was chosen for the UAV control system design. Control system design was carried out using MATLAB and SIMULINK. PID controllers were designed for the roll, pitch and yaw motions of the UAV and the control systems optimized using Fuzzy Logic Controller. The components for the UAV control system including the flight controller, sensors and actuators were selected and a prototype was developed for testing the control system. The prototype was based on an Arduino microcontroller onto which the control system was deployed and tested together with an Arduino based transmitter. Results from SIMULINK simulation of the Fuzzy-PID optimized control system gave shorter resting time for a response to a step input compared to the results from the PID control system working alone. When the control system was deployed onto the prototype for testing, manual control was excellent (implying ease of maneuverability). Automatic control also was good except for the UAV yaw. The accelerometer/gyrometer used for the testing not being so accurate couldn’t respond well to the variation in the yaw-axis but replacement with a better accelerometer/gyrometer should resolve this issue. The list of the selected components was submitted to the Center management for procurement after approval of the components.