Adaptive Attitude Control for Foldable Quadrotors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel adaptive control framework for foldable quadrotors, analyzing attitude errors during configuration changes and demonstrating improved tracking performance through simulation.

Contribution

It presents a unified framework for attitude error analysis and proposes a morphology-aware adaptive controller for better tracking during configuration switches.

Findings

The adaptive controller outperforms conventional controllers in tracking accuracy.

Simulation validates the effectiveness of the control and planning framework.

The framework effectively manages attitude errors during configuration transitions.

Abstract

Recent quadrotors have transcended conventional designs, emphasizing more on foldable and reconfigurable bodies. The state of the art still focuses on the mechanical feasibility of such designs with limited discussions on the tracking performance of the vehicle during configuration switching. In this article, we first present a common framework to analyse the attitude errors of a folding quadrotor via the theory of switched systems. We then employ this framework to investigate the attitude tracking performance for two case scenarios - one with a conventional geometric controller for precisely known system dynamics; and second, with our proposed morphology-aware adaptive controller that accounts for any modeling uncertainties and disturbances. Finally, we cater to the desired switching requirements from our stability analysis by exploiting the trajectory planner to obtain superior tracking performance while switching. Simulation results are presented that validate the proposed control and planning framework for a foldable quadrotor's flight through a passageway.