An Open-Source Framework to Design, Tune, and Fly Nonlinear Control Systems for Autonomous UAVs

Abstract

This paper introduces a freeware open-source software ecosystem to design, tune, and test control systems for autonomous vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) multi-rotor uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as quadcopters and quad-biplanes. This environment comprises C++-coded flight stacks with a suite of control systems, a high-fidelity simulator that allows model-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop tests, computer-aided design (CAD) models of UAVs, and a website for a broad overview of this project. This ecosystem aims to serve as a common platform for the aerospace control community and ease comparative analyses for control design techniques produced by multiple research groups.