Performance evaluation of fuzzy-based PID controller for quadcopter navigation system

Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers have been regarded as one of the most prevalent and successful techniques for controlling dynamic systems. However, in the presence of uncertainties and complicated systems, their operation may be undesirable. The major purpose of this research is to assess and improve the performance of the PID controller in the variable load crop spraying quadcopter navigation system using fuzzy-based approaches. At first, the PID controller parameters are fixed and then are tuned based on a look-up table according to the quadcopter load changes. The simulations reveal that the PID controller with fixed parameters or based on the lookup table does not have its expected performance, in the presence of uncertainties such as load variations, and hence it is required to tune the parameters more correctly. Therefore, here the fuzzy systems are utilized for online parameter tuning of the PID controller in the parameters in the variable load spraying quadcopter navigation system. The proposed fuzzy-based PID controller achieves higher accuracy and more stable navigation compared with the fixed-parameter PID controller or look-up table.