Quadcopter Fractional Controller Accounting for Ground Effect

Although concept of fractional calculus was known for centuries, it was not considered in engineering due to the satisfactory performance of integer order models and control. However, recently, engineers and researchers started to investigate the potentially high performance of fractional calculus in various fields including control theory. This article analyzes the relative performance of fractional versus integer order PID for the quadcopter. After introducing fractional calculus and the mathematical tools which have been used, the dynamics of the quadcopter is presented with additional consideration of the ground effect and torque saturation and sensor measurement. The performance of fractional order controller is evaluated by comparing it to an integer order controller.