Study of sensor fusion for attitude control of a quad-rotor

We presented a quad-rotor controlling algorithm design by using sensor fusion in this paper. The controller design technique was performed by a PD controller with a Kalman filter and compensation algorithm for increasing the stability and reliability of the quad-rotor attitude. In this paper, we propose an attitude estimation algorithm for quad-rotor based sensor fusion by using the Kalman filter. For this reason, firstly, we studied the platform configuration and principle of the quad-rotor. Secondly, the bias errors of a gyro sensor, acceleration and geomagnetic sensor are compensated. The measured values of each sensor are then fused via a Kalman filter. Finally, the performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated through experimental data of attitude estimation. As a result, the proposed sensor fusion algorithm showed superior attitude estimation performance, and also proved that robust attitude estimation is possible even in disturbance. © ICROS 2015.