Embedded systems design of a quadcopter

Flight controller — Example of a UAV flight control solution

Description

This project entails designing a low-cost flight control system for a quadcopter. The solution should comprise of a central microcontroller, radio telemetry, and other on-board sensors relating to navigating and stabilising the quadcopter while in flight, in the form of a manufactured PCB. The student will develop a communication routine between the quadcopter and base station, as well as design a base station graphical user interface that can be used to visualize flight data and also adjust high-level flight parameters. The proposed solutions will initially be implemented in a simulation environment and ratified, using hardware in the loop testing, prior to its execution on a physical quadcopter.

Key skills/interests:

Analogue electronics, embedded systems design, communications design, programming (C++/Python/MATLAB)

Expected outputs:

1x MSc (Eng), 1x Journal/Conference paper in a leading publication.

Supervisors:

Arnold Pretorius, James Hepworth, and Natasha Botha