Design of AHRS for Quadrator Control using Digital Motion Processor

Abstract

Quadrotor is one type of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that uses four motors to drive the propellers. Commonly, quadrotor has inertial sensors or Inertia Movement Unit (IMU), which is a source of data to obtain information attitudes and three-dimension orientation or socalled Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS). This study used Digital Motion Processor (DMP) technology that can perform filter process and an accurate calculation AHRS independently by reducing the calculation process on the microcontroller. The data generated from the DMP were in the form of four-dimensional quaternion and filtered data sensor. In this paper, the discussion focuses on the DMP technique and AHRS comparison. Hardware design, embedded systems and data communication were also included to complete the overall system design quadrotor. The results show that angular position measurements of DMP have less noise than the direct measurement of sensor accelerometer and gyroscope. AHRS obtained from DMP has similar result with the calculation result of Mahony’s AHRS algorithm and Madgwick’s AHRS algorithm. The proposed design utilizes the DMP technology capable to control quadrotor well.