Ideally the engineering design cycle is as follows:
1. Understand the physics and the subtleties of the system that you are trying to control.
2. Model the system mathematically.
3. Design a controller based on the model.
4. Build a simulation and study the behavior of your design in the simulation, testing odd cases and contingencies.
5. Implement the design in hardware.
6. Test, debug, go back to (1) if necessary.
Many engineers want to skip steps 1-4, however each step is necessary for a successful design. The following simulation files are intended to encourage step (4). Some of these simulation files were distributed in 483.
quadrotor_roll.zip - Simulates roll and lateral motion in the cage. Assumes position measurement.
quadrotor_roll_vision.zip - Simulates roll and lateral motion in the case using vision in the loop to provide position measurement.
yaw_dynamics.zip - Simulates heading dynamics with vision in the loop.
altitude_dynamics.zip - Simulates altitude dynamics with vision in the loop.
quadrotor_full.zip - Includes full 6 degrees of freedom, and camera in the loop. Camera frame rate can be explicity specified.