Alexandria Engineering Journal (2023) 76, 543–556

H O S T E D BY
Alexandria University

Alexandria Engineering Journal

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A self-adjusting multi-objective control approach

for quadrotors
Sallam A. Kouritem a,*, Mohannad Mahmoud b, Nabil Nahas c,
Mohammed I. Abouheaf d,*, Ahmed M. Saleh a

a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria 21544, Egypt
b
Department of Electromechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria 21544, Egypt
c
Faculte´ d’administration, Universite´ de Moncton, Moncton, E1A 3E9 NB, Canada
d
College of Technology, Architecture & Applied Engineering, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, 43402 OH, USA

Received 17 December 2022; revised 26 May 2023; accepted 14 June 2023

Available online 23 June 2023

KEYWORDS Abstract The quadrotor represents a class of highly nonlinear dynamic systems and its controlla-
Unmanned aerial vehicles; bility features are challenging. Hence, it serves as an ideal unmanned aerial vehicle platform to val-
PID control design; idate many artificial intelligence-based research investigations. Nonetheless, most of the offline
Multi-objective optimiza- tuning approaches devote efforts to find near optimal control gains to regulate individually the
tion; decoupled motion directions. This work adopts a multi-objective self-adjusting search mechanism
Metaheuristics; to actuate the motions of a quadrotor via deciding the control gains of the interacting loops simul-
Nonlinear threshold accept- taneously. This algorithm employs a first order low pass filter transfer function as an accepting
ing functions approach for the tunning mechanism. The proposed approach is compared with a Genetic Algo-
rithm and another nonlinear Proportional-Integral-Derivative approach to highlight the usefulness
of the proposed mechanism. It was founded that quadrotor follows the desired trajectory with a
small tracking error of less than 2% in the X-Y plane and less than 1 % error tracking error in
the altitude Z. Also, it is recorded that MONLTA can overcome the simulated wind disturbances
of 0.1 N.m as a disturbance torque.
Ó 2023 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria
University This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

The demand for performing tasks without human supervision

* Corresponding authors. has been attracting growing consideration to enhance the
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S.A. Kouritem), autonomy of systems, especially in the presence of distur-
[email protected] (M. Mahmoud), nabil.nahas@u- bances and unstructured dynamics [1]. The Unmanned Aerial
moncton.ca (N. Nahas), [email protected] (M.I. Abouheaf), Vehicle (UAV) technologies have been widely used in indus-
[email protected] (A.M. Saleh). trial as well as military applications such as Synthetic Aperture
Peer review under responsibility of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria Radars (SAR), reconnaissance, surveillance, evacuation, and
University.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2023.06.050
1110-0168 Ó 2023 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
544 S.A. Kouritem et al.

Nomenclatures

Abbreviations VRPD Vehicle Routing Problem with Drone

ACO Colony Optimization IAE Integration of Absolute Error
CS Cuckoo Search ITSE Integration of Time Square Errors
DOF Degrees-of-Freedom HC Hill-Climbing
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
PID Proportional–Integral–Derivative Parameters
PSO Particle Swarm z altitude
LQR Linear Quadratic Regulators tr rise time
GA Genetic Algorithm ts setting time
MONLTA Multi-Objective Non-Linear Threshold accept- tp peak time
ing Algorithm Mp Maximum overshoot amplitude
SISO single-input single-output £ Roll Angle
SAR Synthetic Aperture Radars

payload transfer, crop dusting, filming, medical aid delivery, affiliated to the computational intelligence to develop efficient
and parcels [2]. The quadrotor is one of the most popular and innovative metaheuristics to ensure robust PID perfor-
UAVs because it has a simple low-cost structure, easy to main- mance. Ziegler–Nichols is one of the classical tuning tech-
tain, and flexible maneuverability. Hence, it provides compet- niques for PID control loops, but it is ineffective for systems
itive advantages when compared with fixed-wing aircraft and with coupled control loops such as rotorcraft UAVs. Meta-
helicopters in applications such as dense fields, cluttered areas, heuristics such as Genetic Algorithm (GA) as well as iterative
and hazardous industrial areas like offshore oil rigs and approaches have been to solve optimization problems in power
nuclear plants [3–5]. The quadrotor becomes the most signifi- systems applications [21–23]. Many research studies have been
cant among various types of UAVs so much research has been conducted to reach near-optimal settings to tune the PID con-
conducted in this field. The challenges pertaining to developing trollers using (GA), Particle Swarm(PSO), Colony Optimiza-
UAVs involve their high nonlinearity, multivariable multi- tion (ACO)[24–26], and LQR [27–29]. The range of the
input, multi-output relations, and high coupling with a larger tunned gains and the structure of the objective cost function
number of dynamics that be modeled implicitly. Further, the are shown to be critical and specific to the engineering applica-
difficulty to stabilize the UAVs subject to severe disturbances tion. Barjuei and Ortiz [30] presented a complete comparison
without external corrective forces. All of this challenge the between controllers in terms of control position and mechani-
control and autonomous operation of UAVs [6]. The recent cal vibration of a 3 Degrees-of-Freedom (DOF manipulator.
advances in enhancing the communication bandwidth and The controllers were (i) LQR, (ii) model predictive (iii) H1
computational power of systems provide the opportunity to loop shaping, and (iv) l-synthesis. Batista et al. [31] introduced
accomplish further improvements in the control of complex a comparison between the (PID) and the (LQR) controllers
unmanned systems [7]. applied to the speed control of one cylindrical joint. They
Many control approaches have been adopted, such as self- founded that the PID was better than the LQR in terms of
tunned control loops based on Proportional–Integral–Deriva the rise time. Also, they concluded that PID controllers are
tive (PID) structures [8]. These approaches required a linear robust and stable for the frequency range from 10 to
approximation of the rotorcraft (UAV) around a designated 100 rad/s. The importance of a multi objective optimization
operating region, since the PID controller is a single-input of an industrial robot arm was conducted [32], and the impor-
single-output (SISO) system. Even though, PID-based control tance of optimization of robotic systems was highlighted
schemes have been successfully developed rotorcraft flight con- [33,34], used an LQR with integral error action for the linear
trol systems. The recent advances in flight control adopt mod- model of the quadrotor [35].
ern control approaches such as H1 [9] and Linear Quadratic Recently different methods were considered to improve the
Regulators (LQR) [10,11]. However, these approaches were performance of UAV controllers. Idrissi et al. [36] developed a
faced by many technical challenges in the implementation control mechanism that tackles the dynamic variations of a
phase [8] Other control techniques have been adopted such UAV during flight. The Vehicle Routing Problem with Drone
as nonlinear inverse dynamics [11], involve feedback lineariza- (VRPD) is solved using ACO [37]. Zeng et al. [38] addressed
tion [12], adaptive control [13], sliding mode controller[14], the coordination and routing of a drone-truck pairing. Yan
control using neural network [15], fuzzy control[16], control et al. [39] developed an attitude control for UAVs using an
using fuzzy integral sliding mode control [17], control using adaptive fuzzy PID method. This research managed to solve
integral backstepping [18], and robust adaptive control [19]. the reliant on expert knowledge to determine the membership
Similarly, these approaches have been challenged with the values for the fuzzy system and the control effect. Sonugür [40]
complexity and hard-to-implement control strategies. The con- presented a comprehensive review to innovative approaches
trol design of UAVs using PID structures proved to be practi- control approached of quadrotor. Xu et al. [41] presented atti-
cal and dominated other techniques in many engineering tude control for quadrotor with time-varying effectiveness
applications due to its simple operation principle [20]. The tun- fault in terms of adaptive dynamic programming. Single-
ing of PID controllers attracts the attention of research groups objective optimization approaches based on heuristics such
A self-adjusting multi-objective control approach for quadrotors 545

Table 1 Comparison of MONLTA with PID with similar controllers.

Controller Use Advantages Disadvantages
Linear quadratic Vibration control Good results in position control complicated in terms of the design and modelingmany
regulator (LQR) and position control technical challenges in the implementation phase
Model predictive Vibration control Good results in position complicated in terms of the design and modelingmany
control (MPC) and position control controlRobustness during motion technical challenges in the implementation phasehigh
computational cost
fuzzy control Vibration control Good results in position control complexity and hard-to-implement control strategies
and position control
extended Kalman Vibration control Good results in position control complexity and hard-to-implement control strategies
Filter (EKF) and position control
MONLTA with PID Vibration control Good results in position computational cost
and position control controlDeals with disturbanceTrack
trajectory effectively

as PSO, GA, Cuckoo Search (CS), and deep learning algo- Accepting Algorithm is explained in Section 3. The multi-
rithms were extensively employed for different autonomous objective optimization mechanism is demonstrated in Section 4.
systems [24,26–27]. Sections 5 and 6 present the validation results and analyze the
Herein, a unique Multi-Objective Non-Linear Threshold robustness of the proposed solution. Finally, some concluding
accepting Algorithm (MONLTA) [42] is adopted to determine remarks are highlighted in Section 7.
the near-optimal gains of a UAV control scheme. This algo-
rithm compromises between the desired overshoot percentage, 2. Mathematical modeling and control strategy
rise time, and settling time characteristics. NLTA is employed
to solve some NP hard problems with one objective function In this section, the mathematical modeling of the 6-Degrees-of-
and tune the PID control gains of voltage/frequency control Freedom (6DOF) quadrotor is presented. Furthermore, the
loops in power system applications [43,44]. Herein, the MON- underlying PID control strategy is elaborated.
LTA will be used for the first time to design the control loops
for a quadrotor. The paper applies a multi-objective optimiza- 2.1. Mathematical modeling
tion approach based on a nonlinear accepting function to
decide the different control strategies of a quadrotor for the
first time, to the best of our knowledge. The control scheme The adequate modeling of a quadrotor implies a precise con-
employs six concurrent and interactive loops. Herein, multi- trol design and ensures an optimized performance. In this
objective criteria based on Integration of Absolute Error research, the quadrotor has 6-DOF as shown in Fig. 1. Najm
(IAE) and Integration of Time Square Errors (ITSE) will be and Ibraheem [45], developed a nonlinear mathematical model
used to tune the control strategies (i.e., PID control gains of for a 6-DOF quadrotor system. Their dynamical model consid-
the different loops). The developed approach is compared with ered the acceleration and velocity vectors. It resulted in an
a nonlinear PID control mechanism dictated by an analytical accurate nonlinear dynamical model for the 6-DOF quadrotor
process. Furthermore, a comparative analysis is conducted to system. They derived the nonlinear model using the Euler-
find the best tuning outcomes attempting different metaheuris- Newton formulation to represent the 3D motion of the rigid
tic approaches. This analysis tests the robustness of the pro- body. The adopted model and simulation results are consid-
posed approach under harsh disturbances and unstructured ered to validate the efficiency of the proposed multi-objective
dynamical environment. Hence, different trajectory-tracking control mechanism. The axes and angles used to develop the
scenarios are considered (a single individual trace for each mathematical model are shown in Fig. 1.
degree of freedom, diamond, spiral, and helical paths) to test Assumptions introduced in the Model are as follows:
the effectiveness of MONLTA. So, the paper introduces excel-
lent control and tracking technique without complicity like the 1. The Quadrotor Is a Rigid Body.
nonlinear PID controller and the other complicated con-
trollers. It was founded that the quadrotor follows the desired
trajectory with a small tracking error of less than 2% in the X-
Y plane and less than 1 % error tracking error in the altitude
Z. Also, it is recorded that MONLTA stabilizes the system fas-
ter than those achieved using GA and linear PID approaches.
This highlights the significance of the MONLTA optimization
method, taking into consideration that it is simpler than the
NLPID and its behavior has an overall small settling time
associated with a small overshoot. Table 1 Compares MON-
LTA with PID with similar controllers.
The paper is organized as follows; Section 2 briefly intro-
duces the mathematical modeling of a quadrotor along with
the underlying control strategy. The Nonlinear Threshold Fig. 1 Angles of rotation of 4-motor quadrotor.
546 S.A. Kouritem et al.

2. The mass and moments of inertia are constant and the Cen- 2.2. Control strategy
ter of gravity is at a fixed location (Except in tests that
include external disturbances or payload variation). The PID control strategy is widely adopted in the industrial
3. The only forces affecting the quadrotors are gravity and applications as well as the unmanned systems, especially in
propeller thrust. drones. The 6-DoF quadcopter mathematical model is highly
4. Propellers with an odd index rotate clockwise and others non-linear where four actuators are considered. This imposed
rotate counter-clockwise. challenges to achieve the control objectives. The overall con-
5. All propellers are on the same level and are pointing in the trol scheme employs two control levels. The lower level con-
same direction. tains four PID control loops one for the altitude (z), and
6. Aerodynamic drag and blade flapping are neglected due to three for each Euler direction (i.e., the roll, pitch, and yaw
small size and low airspeed. directions). The higher level contains two PID control loops
for the translations in the X and Y directions. The control deci-
The 6-DOF quadrotor has 4 motors that produce four sions in these loops rely on the desired velocity of the drone
angular speeds (X1, X2, X3, and X4). These speeds are com- and their outputs are directed to the pitch and roll control
bined to develop a force ft and torques ðsx ; sy ; andsz Þ as in loops as depicted from Fig. 3.
(1). Further, the force ft is used to control the altitude z, while
the torques are used to control the angles ð£; ½03B8; anduÞ as 2.3. The optimization goals
can be depicted from Fig. 2. The overall mathematical model is
described by (2) and (3) [46,47]. Hence, the measurements
The objective of the control problem is to regulate the
ðx; y; z; £; ½03B8; anduÞ are needed to regulate the 6-DOF
reference-tracking errors (i.e., follow the desired trajectories).
quadrotor system [46].

 This involves a minimization and a tradeoff between main
ft ¼ b X21 þ X22 þ X23 þ X24 dynamic parameters such as the rise time (tr Þ, setting time

 (ts Þ; peak time (tp Þ; and Maximum overshoot amplitude
sx ¼ bl X23  X21 (Mp Þ. A multi-objective optimization procedure is needed to
compromise between the performances of the different control


sy ¼ bl X24  X22 loops. Accordingly, this procedure decides the control gains of
the different control loops as shown in Fig. 3. A multi-


sz ¼ d X22 þ X24  X22  X23 ð1Þ objective mechanism based on a nonlinear threshold accepting
function is considered to select the control gains to regulate the
80 1 0 10 1
>
> x_ cðwÞcðhÞ ½cðwÞsð/ÞsðhÞ  cðuÞsðwÞ ½sð/ÞsðwÞ þ cðuÞcðwÞsðhÞ u altitude, yaw, roll, and pitch directions of the quadrotor. This
>
> B y_ C ¼ B cðwÞsðhÞ ½cð/ÞcðwÞ þ sð/ÞsðwÞsðhÞ ½cð/ÞsðwÞsðhÞ  cðwÞsð/Þ CB v C
>
> @ A @ A@ A; solution solves for a near optimal set of control gains simulta-
>
>
>
>
>
> z_ sðhÞ cðhÞsð/Þ cðhÞcð/Þ w neously for all degrees of freedom (i.e., find the best control
>
> 0 1 0 10 1 0 1 0 1
>
> u_ 0 r q u sðhÞ fwx
>
> gains for the interactive different control loops collectively).
>
> B C B CB C B C B C
>
> @ v_ A ¼ @ r 0 p A@ v A þ g@ sð/ÞsðhÞ A þ m1 @ fwy A;
>
> There are different multi-objective criteria one is to minimize
>
> _ p ð hÞc ð / Þ f
< w q 0 w c wzft
0 1 0 10 1 conflicting dynamic variables such as the rise-time tr ,
> /_ 1 sð/ÞtðhÞ cð/ÞtðhÞ p
>
> B _ C B0 settling-time ts , peak-time tp , and maximum percentage over-
>
>
> @hA¼@ cð/Þ sð/Þ C B C
A@ q A;
>
>
>
>
> w_ 0 sð/Þ cð/Þ
r shoot Mp . Hence, the goal of this optimization form is to min-
>
>
cð hÞ cð hÞ
>
>
> 0 1 0 Iy Iz 10 1 0 sy þswx 1 imize the tuple (tr , ts , tp , Mp ). The second minimizes together
>
> p_ rq
>
> B C B
I
Iy Iz C
x
B x C
J
>
> @ q_ A ¼ B CB C B sy þswy C the Integration of Absolute Error (IAE)
>
>
> @ Iy A@ pr A þ @ Jy A: Rt
>
: r_ Ix Iy pq sz þswz (IAE = 0 f jerrorðtÞjdt; errorðtÞis the difference error between
Iz Jz

ð2Þ the reference and measured signals of the PID control loops
0 1 0 1 0 1 and tf is the final time of simulation) and Integral Time Square
Rt
x_ sð/ÞsðwÞ þ cð/ÞcðwÞsðhÞ 0 Error (ITSE) (ITSE = 0 f ðt  ðerrorðtÞÞ2 Þdt) of the interacting
B C ft B C B C
@ y_ A ¼  @ cð/Þcð/ÞsðhÞ  cðwÞsð/Þ A þ @ 0 A ð3Þ PID control loops using MONLTA and GA optimization
m
z_ cð/ÞcðhÞ g algorithms. Thus, the aim of this optimization problem is to

Fig. 2 6-DOF Quadcopter system.

A self-adjusting multi-objective control approach for quadrotors 547

Fig. 3 Block diagram of a full quadcopter control scheme.

minimize the control performance given the tuple defined by 3.1. Nonlinear threshold accepting algorithm
(IAE and ITSE).
The NLTA heuristic approach is developed to provide solu-
3. Nonlinear threshold accepting mechanism tions for some single-objective NP-Hard problems [44]. The
multi-objective procedure decides the gains of the different
In the sequel, the self-adjusting optimization solution is control loops of the quadrotor by evaluating multiple objective
detailed out. This solution is implemented using the Nonlinear functions simultaneously. The underlying heuristic approach
Threshold Accepting Algorithm (NLTA). uses a nonlinear accepting function that takes the magnitude

Fig. 4 Flowchart of the NLTA.

548 S.A. Kouritem et al.

form of a Low Pass Filter (LPF). Hence, this can be repre- 4. Multi-objective optimization

sented by a transfer function H such that
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 2 This section introduces the structure of the multi-objective
 l optimization solution along with its computational structure.
HðlÞ ¼ 1 þ
l0
4.1. Multi-objective optimization: a structure
where the nominal and angular frequencies of the LPF are
denoted by l and l0 , respectively.
This function provide means to decide the best solution and The multi-objective optimization solution employs a variable-
at the same time explore new positions or solutions. The opti- length archive to temporarily memorize acceptable dominated
mization process optimizes an overall performance index func- sets as well as the non-dominated solutions. The length of the
tion c that compromises all the subobjectives together to search
for better solutions. A solution is defined to be a combination
of all the PID gains of the control loops. The optimization
scheme compares between a current solution Cs (i.e., the solu-
tion that is already accepted) with a neighboring solution Ns
(i.e., the next exploited or explored solution, given the feasible
space of the control gains). The solution Ns is accepted at either
one of two situations; First, an exploited solution is accepted
when it is found to be more valuable than the current solution
Cs (i.e., cðNÞ  cðCs Þ). Second, an explored solution may be
accepted not fall in local minima and better represent the search

space (i.e., cðNs Þ HðlÞ  cðCs Þ)). Fig. 4 shows a flow chart of
the NLTA solution mechanism.
Fig. 6 Altitude response using the MONLTA optimization
algorithm and classic tuning method.

Fig. 5 Multi-Objective NLTA Mechanism.

A self-adjusting multi-objective control approach for quadrotors 549

archive is initialized with a value L. Further, the acceptance pareto-optimal solution. The pareto set is composed of all
criterion is defined by the principle of amount of domination. the non-dominated solutions and it captures the trade-off
The multi-objective optimization problem is concerned with between the conflicting objectives of the optimization solution.
minimizing a set of n objective criteria simultaneously (i.e.,
multiple cost functions h1 ðNÞ; h2 ðNÞ; . . . ; hn ðNÞ) and n is a 4.2. Multi-objective solution process
def
set composed of l variables such that N ¼ fn1 ; n2 ;    ; nl g The solution process is divided into two steps, the first step is
(i.e., the control gains of the interacting control loops). The concerned with deciding the initial archive solution while the
concept of dominance is adopted to contrast different candi- second one lays out the details of the computational cases.
date solutions against each other and hence accept or reject
the neighboring or new solution. The solution Ni dominates

 4.2.1. Initialization of the multi-objective solution
a solution Nj for a single objective if hr ðNi Þ  hr Nj ; 8r ¼ 1;

 The initialization process aims to construct an archive with
2;    ; n and for multi-objective problem if cðNi Þ  c Nj : 
Therefore, the self-adjusting search after sufficient exploration length L of randomly generated and feasible solutions. Fur-
and exploitation episodes provides a globally non-dominated ther, the quality of the initial archive can be improved using
def a Hill-Climbing (HC) approach [48,49]. This approach ensures
solution N ¼ fn1 ; n2 ;    ; nl g, which is referred to as a that the archive will be updated with new solutions till no fur-
ther improvements are attainable. However, this does not
imply that the hierarchal architecture of the multi-objective
NLTA algorithm will not be able to update these solutions
in the archive.

4.2.2. Multi-objective updating structure

An initial solution is selected from the already existing solution

population in the archive such that Csr ¼ Nr ; r 2 f1; 2; . . . ; Lg:
The neighboring solution Ns is created by perturbing one con-
stituent of the current solution. The dominance status of this
neighboring solution (i.e., its quality compared with the cur-
rent and remaining solutions within the archive) is decided
according to the following cases:
Case 1: The current solution Csr is outperformed or domi-
nated by the neighboring solution Ns and the remaining solu-
Fig. 7 Roll response using the Ziegler-Nichols tuning approach
tions in the archive do not dominate the neighboring one.
and MONLTA algorithm.
Hence, the archive is updated to accept the neighboring solu-
tion and all other solutions dominated by this one, are
removed from the archive.
Case 2: The current solution Csr is outperformed or domi-
Table 2 The parameters used for the Genetic Algorithm. nated by the neighboring solution Ns and there are some solu-
200 Population Size tions in the archive dominate the neighboring one. Then, the
100*Number Of Variables Max Generations archive is updated to accept the neighboring solution and all
[0–5] Initial Values range other solutions, dominated by this one, are removed from
Elite count = 0.05*Population Size (10) Reproduction the archive.
Crossover Fraction = 0.8 Case 3: The current solution Csr is not outperformed or
Forward (Interval = 20, Fraction = 0.2) Migration dominated by the neighboring solution Ns and there are some
Scale = 1, Shrink = 1 Mutation other K solutions in the archive that dominate by the neighbor-
ing one. In this case, the neighboring solution is accepted and

Table 3 Result Summary and Comparison of the validation.

Trial Tuning Method Search Range PID Values Response Change
Kp Ki Kd tr ts ss error % Overshoot tr ss error % Over-shoot
1 Classic NA 4 0 1 1.46 – 20% 40% Base
MONLTA - PD limited 5.98 0 1.49 1.62 7 12% 0 11% 40% –
MONLTA - PID limited 5.98 0.096 1.49 1.64 7.8 11% 0 12% 45% –
2 GA - PID limited 2.23 2.9996 0.1969 0.25 1.7 0% 17% Base
MONLTA - PID limited 2.9692 3.67 0.3417 0.18 1.3 0% 13.50% 28% – 21%
MONLTA PID open 5.9278 0.0372 1.4471 0.04 1.14 0% 0% 84% – –
550 S.A. Kouritem et al.

PK 
added to the archive. Further, any solution i in the archive  hi ðNs Þ þ r¼1 hi ðNr Þ 

which is dominated by the neighboring solution is removed hi ðCs Þ ¼ ; i 2 m; K 2 L; 8r 2 K:

Kþ1
from the archive if ð6Þ
 sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 2 Case 4: If the current solution Csr
is not dominated by the
hi ðCs Þ  l
 H ð lÞ ¼ 1 þ ;8i ¼ 1; 2;    ; n ð5Þ neighboring solution Ns and no any other solution in the
hi ðCs Þ l0 archive could dominate the neighboring one, then accept it.
Further, if a solution in the archive is dominated by the neigh-
where boring, then it can be eliminated from the archive when the fol-
lowing condition is satisfied for that solution
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 2
hi ðNs Þ  l
6 H ðlÞ ¼ 1þ ; 8i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n ð7Þ
hi ðNr Þ l0
Table 4 Quadrotor Parameters [45].
A complete flow chart for the multi-objective optimization
Parameter Value Units
solution is shown in Fig. 5.
Ix 8:5532  103 Kg.m2
Iy 8:5532  103 Kg.m2 5. Validation of the proposed algorithm
Iz 1:476  102 Kg.m2
g 9:81  100 m/s2
The multi-objective optimization solution is validated against
m 9:64  101 Kg
two solutions and the observations from both are briefly dis-
b 7:66  105 m
cussed. In the following numerical experiments, the search
d 5:63  106 m
parameters of the MONLTA solution are set to the values
l 2:2  101 m
(i.e., l ¼ 40; Dl ¼ 0:002; and 1=l0 ¼ 0:0075). These were

Table 5 Tuning of the roll control loop using MONLTA after 15 episodes.
Episode kp ki kd tr ts (2%) tp Mp ISTE_£ IAE_£
1 3.161 0.191 2.785 2.602 6.860 4.760 1.043 5.286 27.754
2 3.089 0.250 1.335 0.849 8.022 2.020 1.033 1.727 18.335
3 2.646 0.107 1.196 0.971 3.180 2.760 1.018 1.560 17.206
4 2.820 0.096 1.808 2.105 6.012 5.040 1.020 2.460 20.999
5 2.835 0.271 1.933 1.775 13.300 3.390 1.052 3.831 24.828
6 3.889 0.179 1.830 1.426 4.521 2.930 1.020 1.522 17.775
7 2.118 0.117 1.317 1.658 10.700 3.450 1.031 2.794 21.694
8 3.617 0.271 1.635 1.185 8.200 2.560 1.031 1.703 18.419
9 3.267 0.452 1.611 1.106 9.860 2.480 1.057 2.311 20.612
10 3.933 0.068 2.919 2.995 6.254 4.900 1.012 2.732 21.340
11 2.280 0.213 1.155 1.060 10.340 2.217 1.044 2.416 20.581
12 2.798 0.166 1.396 1.319 8.034 2.579 1.027 1.929 19.023
13 1.578 0.007 0.994 2.070 na na Na 2.235 17.907
14 3.966 0.291 1.607 1.048 6.555 2.355 1.027 1.430 17.192
15 3.817 0.006 1.478 1.700 na na Na 0.935 13.172

Table 6 The PID control gains of the 6DOF quadcopter using MONLTA and GA.
Gains MONLTA GA
Kp Ki Kd Kp Ki Kd
pitch and roll 3.696 0.214 1.934 2.592 0.966 1.056
yaw 14.953 0.003 4.430 11.590 0.043 4.994
x-y 0.013 2.402 0.075 0.306 2.759 0.081
z 8.161 5.490 17.475 9.998 2.845 7.051
A self-adjusting multi-objective control approach for quadrotors 551

Fig. 8 Time response (a) u-Position (b) £/h-Position.

Fig. 10 A comparison between the MONLTA, GA, Najm

LPID, and Najm NLPID solutions (a) X/Y Tracking, (b) Z
Tracking, (c) u position.

LTA are captured in the reduced rise-time, settling-time and

overshoot percentage. The optimization was run for 100 itera-
tions for 2 different episodes.
The MONLTA is employed to control the rolling motion of
the quadrotor. It is compared with an approach developed by
He and Zhao [51], where a transfer function for the roll motion
is developed using feedback linearization such that
Fig. 9 Step response (a) Z-Position (b) X/Y-Position. 26:1628
GðsÞ ¼ ð8Þ
s2 þ 14:6211s
Table 1 provides the tunned gains of the roll control loop
found to provide the best initialization for the search using 1) Ziegler-Nichols method for a PD-based control loop,
mechanism. 2) MONLTA approach for a PD-based control loop, 3) MON-
The first solution was that introduced by Corke [50], where LTA approach for a PID control loop, 4) GA approach for a
the navigation and speed control tasks were implemented for a PID control loop, and 5) MONLTA approach for a PID con-
6 DoF drone using Proportional-Derivative (PD) compen- trol loop, with an open search space. The MONLTA employed
sators. A detailed block diagram representing the dynamic 100 search episodes and considered the initialization adopted
model of a 6 DoF drone is give in [50]. The step response above. The step response of the different experimentations is
for the altitude control using a classical tuning, PD-based shown in Fig. 7. The MONLTA PID-based solution is per-
MONLTA, and PID-based MONLTA approaches as can be formed using a limited search range such as that used by He
depicted by Fig. 6. The improvements imposed by the MON- and Zhao [51], where a slight improvement in overshot can
552 S.A. Kouritem et al.

Fig. 11 Trajectory tracking of the quadcopter using MONLTA (a) 2D diamond motion, (b) 3D spiral motion, (c) 3D exponential helix
motion.

be observed. However, with an extended search range, signifi-

Table 7 Diamond reference trajectory. cant improvements in response are observed with respect to all
State Reference Trajectory aspects. Table 2 reveals the parameters used for the Genetic
x u(t-15) 2* u(t-25) Algorithm.
y u(t-20)  2* u(t-30) To conclude, the MONLTA solutions converge to new bet-
z u(t) ter sets of control gains without using exhaustive computa-
u u(t) tional power. The simulation parameters such as rise-time,
½03B8 0 settling-time, steady state error, and overshoot percentage
£ 0 are tabulated in Table 3.

Table 8 Spiral reference trajectory. Table 9 Helix reference trajectory.

State Reference Trajectory State Reference Trajectory
x cos (0.1 * pi * t) x cos (0.1 * pi * t)
y sin (0.1 * pi * t) y sin (0.1 * pi * t)
z 0.3 * t z u(t)
u 0.3 * t u u(t)
½03B8 0 ½03B8 0
£ 0 £ 0
A self-adjusting multi-objective control approach for quadrotors 553

6. Results and discussion The simulation results depicted by Fig. 10 revealed that, the
response of MONLTA has the fastest settling time compared
This section investigates the robustness of the MONLTA solu- with the GA or Linear PID control. The values used in
tion employing various challenging scenarios. The perfor- describing the response are the rise time, peak time, overshoot
mance of the MONLTA solution is challenged by imposing percentage, and settling time at both 2% and 5% steady-state
alterations in the dynamic parameters of the drone. Further, error bands. It is observed from the comparison that, the
the effect of the external disturbances and noise on the system NLPID has the smallest overshoot and the fastest rise time
performance will be tackled. In the simulations, the archive’s compared with the LPID and GA. The reason behind this
initial size is set to 10. The initial solutions (i.e., the PID con- behavior is that, the gains of the LPID controller remain
trol gains) are randomly generated using feasible initial guess.
The PID control gains are picked randomly from an interval
[0.1,50]. The simulations are performed using MATLAB-
Simulink on a server with a 20 GHz processor. Table 4 shows
the Quadrotor dynamic parameters used in this study [45].

6.1. Tuning of PID’s gain

The tunings of the PID control gains are conducted by apply-

ing the optimization algorithms MONLTA and GA to the
inner and outer loops. Firstly, the tuning is done for 4 sets
of PID control gains for the inner loops. The roll and pitch
control loops were optimized simultaneously then the yaw
and Altitude Z control loops are tunned separately. Secondly,
two sets of PID control gains representing the outer loops (po-
sition X, Y) are tuned. Hence, there are 18 control gains, 3
gains per each of the 6 PID controllers. Table 5 shows the val-
ues of the roll loop control gains after 15 episodes.
The PID control gains are decided based on two optimiza-
tion criteria (ITSE) and (IAE) to improving the response of the
roll angle £ control loop. As shown in Table 5, episode num-
ber 15 showed no overshoot or chattering behavior. The
remaining control loops were trained using MONTLA and
GA approaches as shown in Table 6.

6.2. Step reference tracking

The PID control gains, listed in Table 4, are adopted to control

the 6-DOF nonlinear dynamic model of quadrotor that is
implemented in MATLAB/Simulink. The wind forces and tor-
ques are overlooked in this simulation, while the rest of the
dynamic parameters of the quadrotor are listed in Table 2.
Due to the symmetry in the shape and structure of the quadro-
tor about  and y axes, considering no effect of the wind
forces or disturbances, the responses of the roll and pitch
(½03B8&£) motions are similar. Hence, those control loops
can share the same gains. The same situation holds for the con-
trol loops of the X and Y motions. The optimization results
obtained by MONLTA and GA are compared with the results
introduced by Najm and Ibraheem [45]. Fig. 8 shows the step
response of the pitch ð½03B8Þ, roll ð£Þ, and yaw ðuÞ motions
after tuning the 6 PID controllers. The responses of the differ-
ent loops (i.e., £; ½03B8; and uÞ highlights the stability of the
quadrotor and provide evaluations for the multi-objective
optimization criteria. The rotation of the quadrotor about
the X-axis (Roll) resembles the motion about Y-axis (Pitch).
These results emphasize that the control loops tuned by MON-
LTA has the minimum overshoot and fastest settling time
when compared with the GA and linear PID approaches.
Fig. 9 shows the step responses related to Z (altitude) and
X/Y motions. Fig. 12 Tracking with torque disturbance.
554 S.A. Kouritem et al.

unchanged for all error values while the gains of the NLPID The third reference trajectory is an exponential helix path.
are adjusted depending on the error values [45]. The structure The radius of the circular path is varying in the X-Y plane
of the NLPID is more complicated in terms of the design and from zero to 5 m as the altitude Z varies from zero to 4 m.
modeling. However, the response for the MONLTA is as com- Table 9 lists the functions employed to generate the reference
petitive or outperforms the NLPID approach at some simula- trajectory. The quadrotor is able to follow the reference trajec-
tions. This highlights the significance of the MONLTA tory with small offset tracking errors. The results show that,
optimization method, taking into consideration that it is sim- the tuning approach using MONLTA provides robust perfor-
pler than the NLPID and its behavior has an overall small set- mances to different reference trajectory-tracking commands.
tling time associated with a small overshoot.
Results shown in Figs. 8-10 emphasize that the behaviors of 6.4. Tracking with disturbances and measurements of noise
the 6-DOF quadrotor tuned using MONLTA and NLPID can
be stabilized faster than those achieved using GA and LPID The performance of the MONLTA tuned control loops is val-
approaches. The MONLTA solution can achieve the same idated after exposure to external disturbance and measurement
response or outperform the NLPID for some dynamic aspects. noise. The wind disturbances affecting the quadrotor can be
The reason for that is the number of episodes was used to simulated using torque disturbance of 0.1 N.m during 80 Sec-
achieve the minimum value of the functions ISTE and IAE onds. The tuned control loops using MONLTA are able to
which generate a PID’s gains and have a response like the com- reject the simulated wind disturbances as shown in Fig. 12.
plicated NLPID. It is observed that, the 6-DOF quadrotor reacts in controlled
fashion to the disturbances with a small overshoot. Further,
6.3. Trajectory tracking Gaussian noise with zero mean is imposed on the measured
signals to test the performance of the MONLTA-tuned control
The performance of the quadrotor adopting the tuned control loops. Fig. 13 shows the performance of the quadrotor under
gains using MONLTA solution is tested for different trajecto- this scenario.
ries, given zero initial conditions. Fig. 11 shows different tra-
jectories responses (diamond, spiral, and exponential helix). 6.5. Payload variation
The first trajectory takes the form of a diamond shape
where the vertices challenge the performance of the controllers The robustness of the proposed solution is tested by varying
with sudden changes. This reference trajectory is generated the payload of the quadrotor. This represents a situation where
using the state functions described in Table 7. It is noticed that
the 6-DOF quadrotor follows the desired trajectory with an
error of 5% at each vertex of the diamond trajectory. The
tracking errors at the different vertices are the same in the x-
y plane with no change in the attitude z. This is due to the sym-
metry in the X/Y control loops as discussed in Section 6.2.
The second trajectory takes a spiral form. In this case, the
quadrotor flies in a circular path with a varying altitude Z.
This reference trajectory is generated using the state functions
described in Table 8. The quadrotor follows the desired trajec-
tory with a small tracking error offset that varies between 0%
and 2% in the X-Y plane, given the variation in the altitude Z.
Further, the reference tracking error in the altitude Z does not Fig. 14 X-tracking response after payload drop.
exceed 1%.

Fig. 13 Reference-tracking with measurement noise.

A self-adjusting multi-objective control approach for quadrotors 555

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