Control of Statically Hoverable Multi-Rotor Aerial Vehicles and Application to Rotor-Failure Robustness for Hexarotors

TitleControl of Statically Hoverable Multi-Rotor Aerial Vehicles and Application to Rotor-Failure Robustness for Hexarotors
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2017
AuthorsMichieletto, G, Ryll, M, Franchi, A
Conference Name2017 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation
Date Published05/2017
Conference LocationSingapore
Abstract

Standard hexarotors are often mistakenly considered ‘by definition’ fail-safe multi-rotor platforms because of the two additional propellers when compared to quadrotors. However this is not true, in fact, a standard hexarotor cannot statically hover with ‘only’ five propellers. In this paper we provide a set of new general algebraic conditions to ensure static hover for any multi-rotor platform with any number of generically oriented rotors. These are elegantly formulated as the full-rankness of the control moment input matrix, and the non-orthogonality between its null-space and the row space of the control force input matrix. Input saturations and safety margins are also taken into account with an additional condition on the null-space of control moment input matrix. A deep analysis on the hoverability properties is then carried out focusing on the propeller loss in a hexarotor platform. Leveraging our general results we explain why a standard hexarotor is not robust and how it can be made robust thanks to a particular tilt of the rotors. We finally propose a novel cascaded controller based on a preferential direction in the null-space of the control moment input matrix for the large class of statically hoverable multi-rotors, which goes far beyond standard platforms, and we apply this controller to the case of failed tilted hexarotor.

Citation Key2017f-MicRylFra
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