Current Status of Quadcopter UAV Control Technology Based on PID and Related Methods

This paper summarizes the current quadcopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) control technology based on Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) and related methods status. Firstly, quadcopters’ basic dynamics and kinematics are explained in detail, explicitly clarifying the underactuated and strongly coupled system features of quadcopters, to make a good foundation for the research of the method of control. Secondly, the key technologies of the control are summarized as follows: Traditional PID control is still the basic method for quadcopter attitude and position control because of its simple structure and high reliability, but it does not have the robustness when there is a strong external disturbance and nonlinear. Fuzzy PID control adjusts the parameters in real time according to the certain fuzzy rules, and improves adaptability in the occasion of fuzzy environment, but it also has the shortcoming of dependence on expert experience in the rule formulation. Particle Swarm Optimization-PID (PSO-PID) and Genetic Algorithm-PID (GA-PID) use intelligent algorithm to do the global parameter optimization. PSO-PID is good at optimization efficiency. GA-PID is good at global searching ability, but both of them have the slow late-iteration convergence, and GA-PID is also prone to local optima. Finally, the application scenario of each method is summarized, the future direction is summarized, and the reference is provided to do the optimization of quadcopter control technology.