Performance Evaluation of a PID and a Fuzzy PID Controllers Designed for Controlling a Simulated Quadcopter Rotational Dynamics Model

Abstract

This work is concerned with designing two types of controllers, a PID and a Fuzzy PID, to be used
for flying and stabilizing a quadcopter. The designed controllers have been tuned, tested, and
compared using two performance indices which are the Integral Square Error (ISE) and the Integral
Absolute Error (IAE), and also some response characteristics like the rise time, overshoot, settling
time, and the steady state error. To try and test the controllers, a quadcopter mathematical model has
been developed. The model concentrated on the rotational dynamics of the quadcopter, i.e. the roll,
pitch, and yaw variables. The work has been simulated with “MATLAB”. To make testing the
simulated model and the controllers more realistic, the testing signals have been applied by a user
through a joystick interfaced to the computer. The results obtained indicated a general superiority in
performance for the Fuzzy PID controller over the PID controller used in this work. This conclusion
is based by the following figures:                 lesser ISA for the roll, pitch, and yaw
consequently,                   lesser IAE for the roll, pitch, and yaw consequently,
              lesser rise time and settling time for the roll and pitch consequently, and    
lesser settling time for the yaw. Moreover, the FPID gave zero overshoot versus    ,    ,
and     in the PID case for the roll, pitch, and yaw consequently. Both controllers gave zero steady
state error with close rise times for the yaw. This superiority of the FPID controller is gained as the
fuzzy part of it continuously and online adapts the parameters of the PID part.