H2 Optimized PID Control of Quad-Copter Platform with Wind Disturbance

Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) scheme is the most commonly used algorithm for designing the controllers for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). However, tuning PID gains is a non trivial task. A number of methods have been developed for tuning the PID gains for UAV systems. However, these methods do not handle wind disturbances, which is a major concern for small UAVs. In this paper, we propose a new method for determining optimized PID gains in the H2 optimal control framework, which achieves improved wind disturbance rejection. The proposed method compares the classical PID control law with the H2 optimal controller to determine the H2 optimal PID gains, and involves solving a convex optimization problem. The proposed controller is tested in two scenarios, namely, vertical velocity control, and vertical position control. The results are compared with the existing LQR based PID tuning method.