This module of the Elective in Robotics course presents basic methods and recent results in modeling and control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with main emphasis on quadrotors.

Contents

Introduction and motivation: applications, market, challenges, opportunities, terminology

Modeling: different actuation designs, focus on quadrotors

Basic control problems: attitude, heigh, position control, trajectory tracking

State estimation: attitude, velocity, position

Main control approaches: based on approximate and exact linearization, on backstepping, defined on SE(3)

Motion planning and obstacle avoidance: the challenge of planning for underactuated vehicles, control barrier functions for critical regions avoidance

Fault tolerant control (Prof. A. Cristofaro), to be confirmed

Vision-based control

Prerequisites

This module has no strict prerequisites. However, basic knowledge of rigid body dynamics and automatic control will help.

ECTS credits for this module: 3 credits (out of 12 credits for the whole course).

Lectures (from Tuesday, 4th October 2022 to Thursday, 3 November 2022)

Tue 15:00-17:00, Wed 15:00-17:00, Thu 15:00-17:00, room B2, via Ariosto 25