Abstract:

Traditionally Aerospace was part of Mechanical Engineering, but in the last years the greatest innovations came from the field of Information Technology. Therefore Information Technology for Aerospace is a new research branch at the University of Wuerzburg and unique in Germany. It combines beside other subjects Computer Science, Aerospace and Control Engineering, which is the focus of our work. To give the students a deeper understanding of these topics and teach them more practical skills, we developed two avionic control systems for the students to use. On this way the students can learn tasks like designing controllers, programming embedded systems as well as gathering and analyzing sensor information. The idea is to give them the opportunity to apply theoretical background in practice on very interesting and motivating applications.

The first system is a Seesaw Control System (SCS) where the students can observe, study and experiment on a seesaw system which consists of two brushed motors with propellers. Their task is to stabilize the system at desired pitch angle and rotation velocity, and later to improve the system response by tuning controller parameters and improving sensor data gathering and interpretation. All the system I/O signals are real-time monitored by a control panel implemented in LabVIEW.

The second system is a Quadrocopter (Quadrotor) Control System (QCS) which is a self-made quadrocopter connected with a joint on a shaft. There are two versions of this system available: One with full 3DOF movement and one which allows adjustable 1 DOF pitch, 1 DOF yaw or a combination of 2 DOF pitch and yaw movements. All the sensors (IMU: Accelerometer, Gyroscope) and the actuator controllers (Brushless Motors) are connected via one I²C bus to simplify the communication. Using the QCS, the students can implement step by step and test their own control algorithm to stabilize the system and later to use it in real flying quadrocopters. This has been proved by free flight tests.

Keywords:

Avionic, Controlling, Control, Quadrocopter, Quadrotor, LabView, Seesaw.