A platform for the direct hardware evolution of quadcopter controllers

David Howard; Torsten Merz

IROS 2015poster15 citations

A platform for the direct hardware evolution of quadcopter controllers

Abstract

We describe an experimental platform that uses an evolutionary algorithm to automatically tune the gains of a cascaded PID quadcopter controller. All parameters are tuned simultaneously, few platform assumptions are necessary, and no modeling is required. The platform is able to run back-to-back experiments for over 24 hours without human intervention. In a sample experiment, we apply the system to solve a hovering task — the behaviors generated by an initially-random population of gain vectors are evaluated and gradually improved, with the attainment of high fitness hover controllers reported within 12 hours.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{iros2015_aplatformforthed,
  title = {A platform for the direct hardware evolution of quadcopter controllers},
  author = {David Howard and Torsten Merz},
  booktitle = {IROS 2015},
  year = {2015}
}