Design, Mathematical Modeling, and Stability of a Reconfigurable Multirotor Aerial Vehicle
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 33, Issue 2
Abstract
A new design of a reconfigurable multirotor is developed by employing a novel active–passive motor scheme. The scheme is based on quadrotor configuration with four additional motors placed in coaxial setup along a single axis. This unconventional design seeks to improve the general response of the system and increase the payload carrying capacity of the aerial vehicle. This paper presents an extensive mathematical model to establish the stability of the design, along with simulation and various real time tests. Simulation of the mathematical model with a proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller shows the stability and responsiveness of the system in different configurations. Throttle response is also compared for different configurations. Finally, preliminary experimental test results with a prototype employing the same design are discussed. It is analytically and experimentally a stable system with a general improvement in throttle response.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude toward Manipal Institute of Technology and Manipal Academy of Higher Education for supporting the project and promoting a research culture throughout the academic curricula. We express special gratitude to Gaurav Rajput, Student, Department of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology for being our guide as a senior student, and his immense contribution in fabrication of the prototype. We are also grateful to Mr. Mahesh for maintaining and managing our lab and allowing us to perform experiments on our prototype. Also, thanks to Hariharan Venkatesh, Student, Department of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology for coming up with the idea of a reconfigurable, multirotor and the basic design of the aircraft. Finally, thanks to Arjit Seth, Student, Department of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology for his valuable input in the mathematical model.
References
Altug, E., J. P. Ostrowski, and C. J. Taylor. 2003. “Quadrotor control using dual camera visual feedback.” In Vol. 3 of Proc., IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA’03), 4294–4299. New York: IEEE.
Artale, V., C. Milazzo, and A. Ricciardello. 2013. “Mathematical modeling of hexacopter.” Appl. Math. Sci. 7 (97): 4805–4811. https://doi.org/10.12988/ams.2013.37385.
Balas, C. 2007. “Modelling and linear control of quadrotor.” M.Sc. thesis, Dept. of Aerospace Dynamics, Cranfield Univ.
Bondyra, A., S. Gardecki, P. Gasior, and W. Giernacki. 2016. “Performance of coaxial propulsion in design of multi-rotor uavs.” In Challenges in automation, robotics and measurement techniques, 523–531. New York: Springer.
Brescianini, D., and R. D’Andrea. 2016. “Design, modeling and control of an omni-directional aerial vehicle.” In Proc., IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 3261–3266. New York: IEEE.
Driessens, S., and P. E. Pounds. 2013. “Towards a more efficient quadrotor configuration.” In Proc., IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 1386–1392. New York: IEEE.
Fjellstad, O.-E., and T. I. Fossen. 1994. “Singularity-free tracking of unmanned underwater vehicles in 6 dof.” In Vol. 2 of Proc., of the 33rd IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, 1128–1133. New York: IEEE.
Guenard, N., T. Hamel, and V. Moreau. 2005. “Dynamic modeling and intuitive control strategy for an ‘x4-flyer’.” In Vol. 1 of Proc., Int. Conf. on Control and Automation (ICCA’05), 141–146. New York: IEEE.
Hoffmann, G., H. Huang, S. Waslander, and C. Tomlin. 2007. “Quadrotor helicopter flight dynamics and control: Theory and experiment.” In Proc., AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conf. and Exhibit. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2007-6461.
Michieletto, G., M. Ryll, and A. Franchi. 2018. “Fundamental actuation properties of multirotors: Force–moment decoupling and fail–safe robustness.” IEEE Trans. Rob. 34 (3): 702–715. https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2018.2821155.
Moussid, M., A. Sayouti, and H. Medromi. 2015. “Dynamic modeling and control of a hexarotor using linear and nonlinear methods.” Int. J. Appl. Inf. Syst. 9 (5): 9. https://doi.org/10.5120/ijais2015451411.
Mueller, M. W., and R. D’Andrea. 2014. “Stability and control of a quadrocopter despite the complete loss of one, two, or three propellers.” In Proc., 2014 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 45–52. New York: IEEE.
Omurlu, V. E., A. Sagirli, and E. Haskoy. 2012. “Nonlinear state-space representations of a quadrotor through bond-graph technique.” In Proc., 2012 24th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC), 620–627. New York: IEEE.
Roskam, J. 1998. Airplane flight dynamics and automatic flight controls. Lawrence, KS: DARcorporation.
Segui-Gasco, P., Y. Al-Rihani, H.-S. Shin, and A. Savvaris. 2014. “A novel actuation concept for a multi rotor uav.” J. Intell. Rob. Syst. 74 (1–2): 173–191. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-013-9987-3.
Tayebi, A., and S. McGilvray. 2004. “Attitude stabilization of a four-rotor aerial robot.” In Vol. 2 of Proc., 43rd IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control (CDC), 1216–1221. New York: IEEE.
Techout, T. R., and S. L. Morris. 2003. Introduction to aircraft flight mechanics: Performance, static stability, dynamic stability and classical feedback control. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Tournier, G., M. Valenti, J. How, and E. Feron. 2006. “Estimation and control of a quadrotor vehicle using monocular vision and moire patterns.” In Proc., AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conf. and Exhibit. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Verbeke, J., D. Hulens, H. Ramon, T. Goedeme, and J. De Schutter. 2014. “The design and construction of a high endurance hexacopter suited for narrow corridors.” In Proc., 2014 Int. Conf. on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 543–551. New York: IEEE.
Yang, C., Z. Yang, X. Huang, S. Li, and Q. Zhang. 2013. “Modeling and robust trajectory tracking control for a novel six-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle.” Math. Prob. Eng. 2013 (1): 673525. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/673525.
Zemalache, K. M., L. Beji, and H. Maaref. 2008. “Control of a drone: Study and analysis of the robustness.” J. Autom. Mob. Rob. Intell. Syst. 2 (1): 33–42.
Zhang, R., X. Wang, and K.-Y. Cai. 2009. “Quadrotor aircraft control without velocity measurements.” In Proc., 48th IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, 2009 Held Jointly with the 2009 28th Chinese Control Conf. (CDC/CCC 2009), 5213–5218. New York: IEEE.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 33 • Issue 2 • March 2020
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 23, 2018
Accepted: Aug 21, 2019
Published online: Nov 23, 2019
Published in print: Mar 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Apr 23, 2020
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.