Sensitivity: Internal A HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION OF 6DOF QUADCOPTER MATLAB/SIMULINK CONTROLLER ALGORITHM TO AN AUTOPILOT Mr Abdelkader Fareha 1 , Dr. Amar Bousbaine 1 , Mr Ajay K Josaph 1 1 College of Engineering and Technology, Departement of Electronics, Computing and Mathematics University of Derby Derby, Derbyshire, DE22 3AW a.bousbaine.derby.ac.uk Keywords: QUADCOPTER, KALMAN FILTER, PIXHAWK, MATLAB/SIMULINK, PID Abstract This paper presents a hardware implementation of Control algorithm for 6DOF Quadcopter developed on MATLAB/SIMULINK to an autopilot Microcontroller (PIXHAWK) using MATLAB/SIMULINK Embedded Coder. After the validation of the SIMULINK model controller results through the software simulation, the designed controller is converted into C\C++ and uploaded into the Pixhawk autopilot by creating SIMULINK application in the autopilot firmware. This paper presents a rapid and real test solution for quadcopter control system using Pixhawk autopilot which will provide further real adjustment for the control parameters. This feature is used in this research is to deploy the SIMULINK codes into the Pixhawk autopilot board through the Embedded Coder Tool. 1 Introduction In recent years, drone technology has been rapidly evolving as new innovations are bringing more advanced drones to the industry every few months. Drone is a broad term used to describe any kind of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Drones come in different types, shapes, sizes and have different configurations such as bicopter, tricopter, quadcopter, hexacopter, octocopter etc. Quadcopters have generated considerable interest in both the control community due to their complex dynamics and a lot of potentials in outdoor applications because of their advantages over regular aerial vehicles. A quadcopter is a more specific term used to refer to a UAV that is controlled by four rotors, which falls under vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) category in drones[1-6]. Despite the diversity of UAVs, a robust closed loop control system must be designed for the stability and maneuverability of the quadcopter. The control system must be able to achieve, the necessary maneuvers through a control commands system generated from the combination of software and hardware using different control mechanisms Today, some of the widely simulation software used to develop high computing algorithm with multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) is MATLAB/SIMULINK. However; to integrate the designed algorithm into a hardware board which incorporates the necessary sensors such as IMU (inertial measurement unit) and altitude measurement (barometer). The Board is selected from various MATLAB support package for robotic system integration, this paper aims to present a rapid and real test solution for quadcopter control system using Pixhawk autopilot which will provide further real adjustment for control parameters [1]. 2 Description of the Autopilot The PIXHAWK is an autopilot-on-module see Fig.1 with high-performance suitable for all different type of Unmanned Ariel Vehicle (UAV), Unmanned Ground Vehicle, boats and any other Kinetic robotic platform. It is used by a large number of platforms targeted towards high-end research, amateur and industry due to its combined functionality of the (Autopilot / Flight Management Unit) PX4IO (Airplane/Rover Servo and I/O Module) in the same board. The autopilot is an inbuilt board which includes an ARM Cortex M4 central processing unit (CPU) and ST Microelectronics® sensor technology, all running in the NuttX Real Time Operating System (RTOS) that allows to