Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation of a 3-DoF Quadcopter

Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulation is a practical step in the development and validation of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) controllers. This paper investigates 3-DoF quadcopter attitude modelling and control within a Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop (C-HIL) framework. The experimental setup executes the attitude plant model in an OPAL-RT real-time environment and runs a discrete PID controller (PI for yaw) on a TI LaunchXL-F280049C microcontroller, with analog/digital I/O exchange at 1 kHz. The evaluation focuses on step-response tracking and end-to-end timing (latency) in the closed loop. Results show that the embedded PID/PI implementation achieves stable tracking with small steady-state error while revealing real-time implementation effects such as quantization and saturation. Key implementation details (models, scaling, and I/O mapping) are documented to support replication; complete project files are available from the authors upon reasonable request.