Teaching Aids for Laboratory Experiments with AR.Drone2 Quadrotor**The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the project APVV 0551-11 and the Scientific Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic under the grant 1/0053/13 and the internal grant of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava for support of young researchers.

Abstract

The goal of the paper is to create low-cost quadrotor laboratory experiments for undergraduate and graduate students at automation departments. We present tutorials for various experiments with the AR.Drone2 quadrotor. This device is an eye-catching and versatile system where students can solve problems in various areas of modeling, identification, and control of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) nonlinear systems. A software interface for experiments is based on Robot Operating System (ROS) and Ardrone_autonomy package. It is possible to use different programming languages like C++, Python and Lisp within the ROS depending on a user's preference. In the paper we present basic characteristics of the AR.Drone2, a suitable modeling approach, system identification from input-output data, state observation, and control design. We accentuate an experimental validation.