Development of a Low-Cost Experimental Quadcopter Testbed Using an Arduino Controller and Software

Abstract This paper explains the integration process of an autonomous quadcopter platform and the design of Arduino based novel software architecture that enables the execution of advanced control laws on low-cost off-the-shelf products based frameworks. Here, quadcopter dynamics are explored through the classical nonlinear equations of motion. Next, quadcopter is designed, built and assembled using off-the-shelf, low-cost products to carry a camera payload which is mainly utilized for any type of surveillance missions. System identification of the quadcopter dynamics is accomplished through the use of sweep data and CIFER to obtain the dynamic model. The unstable, non-linear quadcopter dynamics are stabilized using a generic control algorithm through the novel Arduino based software architecture. Experimental results demonstrate the validation of the integration and the novel software package running on an Arduino board to control autonomous quadcopter flights.