S. McGilvray

Papers

Total Citations

1,253

H-Index

About

S. McGilvray is a prominent robotics and control systems researcher whose work has significantly advanced the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), particularly quadrotor aircraft. McGilvray's research has focused on attitude stabilization and feedback control methodologies for vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) systems, with a particular emphasis on quaternion-based approaches that enable precise and mathematically robust control of multi-rotor platforms. McGilvray's most influential contribution, "Attitude Stabilization of a VTOL Quadrotor Aircraft" (2006), has garnered an remarkable 1,004 citations, establishing it as a foundational reference in the UAV control literature. This work introduced a novel feedback control scheme that compensates for Coriolis and gyroscopic torques to achieve exponential attitude stabilization — a critical capability for reliable autonomous flight. An earlier companion paper from 2004 further demonstrated the viability of quaternion-based control for four-rotor systems, accumulating 249 citations in its own right. Together, these contributions have profoundly influenced how researchers and engineers approach quadrotor control design, helping lay the groundwork for the explosive growth of UAV research and applications that followed. McGilvray's work remains essential reading for anyone entering the field of aerial robotics and autonomous systems.