Autonomous Flight of Quadcopter in the Presence of Ground Effect

Flying near the ground surface produces the ground effect which causes fluctuations in the flight dynamics of MAV. similar effect occurs while flying near ceiling. In this paper the changes on the quadcopter’s dynamic due to ground effect and ceiling effect is studied, and accordingly, controller for regulating quadcopter’s altitude in these conditions is proposed. To attain autonomous flight in GPS-denied environment, an onboard computer-vision subsystem is designed to estimate velocity and relative position of the quadcopter. fuzzy- PD controller is designed and implemented in both simulations and real-world to control altitude of the quadcopter. The results show that this nonlinear controller has higher performance in comparison to classic controllers.