State Drift and Gait Plan in Feedback Linearization Control of A Tilt Vehicle

TL;DR

This paper investigates the phenomenon of state drift in feedback linearization control of tilt-structure vehicles, introducing a fictional model to evaluate tilt-structure controllers and proposing methods to mitigate drift effects.

Contribution

It presents the first analysis of state drift in tilt-structure vehicle control and offers a potential approach to prevent this issue in feedback linearization design.

Findings

Identification of state drift phenomenon in tilt-structure control

Introduction of a fictional tilt-vehicle model for evaluation

Proposed method to avoid state drift in controllers

Abstract

To stabilize a conventional quadrotor, simplified equivalent vehicles, e.g., autonomous car, are developed to test the designed controller. Based on that, various controllers based on feedback linearization have been developed. With the recently developed concept of tilt-rotor, there lacks the simplified or equivalent model, however. Indeed, the tilt structure is relatively unusual in vehicles. In this research, we put forward a unique fictional vehicle with tilt structure, which is to help evaluate the property of the tilt-structure-aimed controllers. One phenomenon, state drift, in controlling an over-actuated tilt structure by feedback linearization is presented subsequently. State drift can be easily neglected and is not paid attention to in the current researches in tilt-rotor controller design so far. We report this phenomenon and provide a potential approach to avoid this behavior.