Introduction to Multicopter Design and Control

Quan Quan received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), China in 2004 and 2010, respectively. He has been an associate professor at Beihang University since 2013. He is also the director of reliable flight control group at Beihang University. His main research interests include vision-based navigation and reliable flight control. To date he has published 37 peer-reviewed journal papers and 20 conference papers, including IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Mechatronics, Neural Networks and Learning Systems, Aerospace and Electronic Systems, Reliability and AIAA Transactions on Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. In addition, he has launched a design evaluation web for small aircraft.

• Introduction.- PART I DESIGN.- Basic Composition.- Configuration and Structural Design.- Modeling and evaluation of propulsion system.- PART II MODELING.- Coordinate system and attitude representation.- Dynamic model and parameter identification.- PART III ESTIMATION.- Sensor model and calibration.- Observability and Kalman filter.- State estimation.- PART IV CONTROL.- Stability and Controllability.- Low-Level Flight Control.- Position Control based on SemiAutonomous Autopilot.- PART V DECISION.- Mission Decision-Making.- Health Evaluation and Failsafe.- Outlook.

“The book has sprung out of a course taught by the author at Beihang University as well as some of his research in the area. … Multicoptor design and build provide an ideal such project. Hence, this text, aimed at undergraduates, is a timely addition to many reading lists.” (James Whidborne, The Aeronautical Journal, Vol. 122 (1258), December, 2018)​