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I've designed a quadcopter and have it printed out on a 3D printer. Now I need to control it.

I have formulated an MDP (Markov decision process) and want the helicopter to learn when it is in a stable hovering position.

I have an on-board INS (inertial navigation sensor) that outputs $(x,y,z), (\dot{x}, \dot{y}, \dot{z}), (\phi,\theta,\psi), (\dot{\phi}, \dot{\theta},\dot{\psi})$ - [position], [velocity], [attitude] and [attitude rotation speed] respectively).

Therefore, the MDP is formulated as follows:

States:

  • $x$
  • $y$
  • $z$
  • $\dot x$
  • $\dot y$
  • $\dot z$
  • $\phi$
  • $\theta$
  • $\psi$
  • $\dot\phi$
  • $\dot\theta$
  • $\dot\psi$

Actions:

  • rotor1
  • rotor2
  • rotor3
  • rotor4

Rewards:

  • 1 if hovering; 0 otherwise

The trouble is, I don't know how to get a transition probability matrix. Do I get this from flight data? How best to go about this?

Is it necessary to build a quadcopter in a physics simulator (I've never done this before...)

Many thanks in advance,

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    I'll make it +\i$n$finity -\infinity...2012-09-18

1 Answers 1

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Your question is not answerable. You do not have a specific question on a specific topic. You have a challenging engineering project, and design decisions are not to be made lightly. Moreover, the specifications you provided are, to put it diplomatically, scandalously incomplete!

If you want to play around with RC aircraft and flight control systems, then get an RC airplane that is stable. Helicopters are a nightmare: they are highly unstable and thus hard to control, and the rotating blades can maim or kill you.

If you still want to go ahead, then make sure you obtain a good model of the dynamics of the quadcopter. Then read all the papers you can find on flight control systems for helicopters (take a look at Vijay Kumar's work). Build a SIMULINK model of the quadcopter, and only then can you think of MDP stabilization.

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    Pretty much. I mean, the pole balancing problem has no knowledge of the system dynamics. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-KLtkDlh82012-09-18