A project-oriented course on guidance and control of autonomous aerial vehicles

In this paper, a project oriented course on guidance and control of autonomous aerial vehicles (UAVs) is presented. The paper describes the di erent modules of the course and how they are addressed using the project oriented approach. The project uses a quadrotor UAV that is used as the case study during the course. In this course, the students learn how to mathematically model quadrotor UAV fight characteristics, develop feedback control algorithms to enable stable flight control and fuse sensor measurements using Kalman lter techniques to estimate the UAV position and orientation. Students develop these concepts through both simulation and interaction with UAV real measurements. Throughout the course, students build a full 6-degree-of-freedom simulation of controlled quadrotor UAV ight using MATLAB and Simulink.
This work has been partially funded by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERFD) through the project SCAV (ref. MINECO DPI2017-88403-R) and and by SMART Project (ref. num. EFA153/16 Interreg Cooperation Program POCTEFA 2014-2020).
Peer Reviewed
Postprint (author's final draft)