3D MPC-Controlled Quadrotor with Inverted Pendulum

This project tackles the classic but challenging problem of balancing an inverted pendulum atop a flying quadrotor — a highly nonlinear system combining aerial dynamics with inherently unstable pendulum motion.

The pipeline combines three key components:

• Direct Collocation generates dynamically feasible reference trajectories that respect the joint system constraints.
• Model Predictive Control (MPC) tracks those trajectories in real time, solving a constrained optimization problem at each timestep to keep the pendulum upright while the quadrotor moves.
• RRT* provides collision-free path planning in obstacle-rich environments, feeding waypoints into the trajectory generator.

The result is a quadrotor that can navigate through cluttered spaces while maintaining balance of the attached pendulum — a problem that would defeat most single-controller approaches.