Towards a new design with generic modeling and adaptive control of a transformable quadrotor

Abstract

Recently, transformable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become a subject of great interest in the field of flying systems, due to their maneuverability, agility and morphological capacities. They can be used for specific missions and in more congested spaces. Moreover, this novel class of UAVs is considered as a viable solution for providing flying robots with specific and versatile functionalities. In this paper, we propose (i) a new design of a transformable quadrotor with (ii) generic modeling and (iii) adaptive control strategy. The proposed UAV is able to change its flight configuration by rotating its four arms independently around a central body, thanks to its adaptive geometry. To simplify and lighten the prototype, a simple mechanism with a light mechanical structure is proposed. Since the Center of Gravity (CoG) of the UAV moves according to the desired morphology of the system, a variation of the inertia and the allocation matrix occurs instantly. These dynamics parameters play an important role in the system control and its stability, representing a key difference compared with the classic quadrotor. Thus, a new generic model is developed, taking into account all these variations together with aerodynamic effects. To validate this model and ensure the stability of the designed UAV, an adaptive backstepping control strategy based on the change in the flight configuration is applied. MATLAB simulations are provided to evaluate and illustrate the performance and efficiency of the proposed controller. Finally, some experimental tests are presented.

Dynamic responses due to the Dryden gust of an autonomous quadrotor UAV carrying a payload

“…7 that the SMC reduces the oscillation more than the PD. Especially at the time when a disturbance is applied to the system [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]s, not only the peak amplitude calculated with the SMC is smaller than that calculated with the PD, but the time required for the system to return to a minimum oscillation is also reduced.…”

“…These controllers are selected for this study because they are the most used for quadrotor control, as shown in Refs. [11,12,34,35,37]. The comparison between the SMC and the PD controllers has been made to assess the main contributions of this paper, that consists in the new dynamic configuration and vibration suppression over the quadrotor flight phases.…”

Avoiding contingent incidents by quadrotors due to one or two propellers failure

“…The FT control can be used to regain control of the quadrotor when partial loss of thrust generated by the propellers or complete propeller failure occurs. The authors in [9][10][11] proposed geometric changes in the structure of the quadrotor to compensate against any faulty behavior. The main impetus of this paper comes from the idea to introduce additional stability to help quadrotors in maintaining pose in 3D space and performing safe maneuverings despite losing one propeller or two opposing propellers.…”

Sliding Mode Controller Based on the Sliding Mode Observer for a QBall 2+ Quadcopter with Experimental Validation

“…They have many advantages compared to the fixed-wing drones in terms of maneuverability, structure and versatility. Moreover, they have a simple mechanical design, a small size and a low cost [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Quadrotors are widely exploited in military and civilian missions such as, search and rescue, mapping, protection of sensitive points, and infrastructure inspection [8,9,10,11,12].…”