Publication

Abstract : Simulation has been an integral part of the research and development domain in the current era. Especially in the field of aerial robotics, the introduction of simulation techniques and several simulation platforms has been a great breakthrough and has given a lot of options for the researcher to reiterate the designing and functioning of the final model without building it in real life which completely strikes off the disadvantage of financial incur of building the model mainly for testing purposes. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach through which one can design and simulate their own custom quadcopter in a platform like Gazebo with the help of ArduPilot flight stack and QGroundControl software and then stabilize it in the simulation with the help of the LiftDragPlugin. An experimental set-up was designed and carried out to prove that the quadcopter was stable before continuing to build the physical model. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the idea of building a personalized quadcopter and integrating it with the major simulation platforms like Gazebo and ArduPilot to make the vehicle work and fly stably. This work is aimed to inspire the creative aerial robotics researchers to think outside the box and to motivate them to come up with their own vehicle for their applications rather than depending on the already established group of simulated vehicles available.