Particle Swarm Optimization and Cuckoo Search-Based Approaches for Quadrotor Control and Trajectory Tracking

Abstract

This paper explores the full control of a quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) byexploiting the nature-inspired algorithms of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Cuckoo Search(CS), and the cooperative Particle Swarm Optimization-Cuckoo Search (PSO-CS). The proposedPSO-CS algorithm combines the ability of social thinking in PSO with the local search capability inCS, which helps to overcome the problem of low convergence speed of CS. First, the quadrotordynamic modeling is defined using Newton-Euler formalism. Second, PID (Proportional, Integral,and Derivative) controllers are optimized by using the intelligent proposed approaches and theclassical method of Reference Model (RM) for quadrotor full control. Finally, simulation resultsprove that PSO and PSO-CS are more efficient in tuning of optimal parameters for the quadrotorcontrol. Indeed, the ability of PSO and PSO-CS to track the imposed trajectories is well seen from3D path tracking simulations and even in presence of wind disturbances.