Iriarte, Imanol (Tecnalia), Otaola, Erlantz (Tecnalia), Culla, David (Tecnalia), Iglesias, Iñaki (Tecnalia), Lasa, Joseba (Tecnalia), Sierra, Basi (University of Basque Country)

Modeling and control of an overactuated aerial vehicle with four tiltable quadrotors attached by means of passive universal joints

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "UAS Testbeds" (FrD1), Friday, September 4, 2020, 17:30−17:50, Macedonia Hall

2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), September 1-4, 2020 (Postponed from June 9-12, 2020), Athens, Greece

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 25, 2024

Abstract

We present a novel overactuated aerial vehicle based on four quadrotors connected to an airframe by means of passive universal joints. The proposed architecture allows to independently control the six degrees of freedom of the airframe without having fixed propellers at inefficient configurations or making use of dedicated rotor tilting actuators. After deriving the dynamic equations that describe its motion, we propose a linear control strategy that is able to successfully decouple rotation and translation, relying exclusively on on-board sensors. A prototype is built and preliminary experimental results demonstrate that the concept is feasible.