Modeling and Control of a Novel Bi-Quadcopter with Auxiliary Thruster Mechanism

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel under-actuated Bi-Quadcopter UAV with an auxiliary thruster, develops its dynamics, and applies nonlinear control, verified through simulations including failure scenarios.

Contribution

It presents a new UAV configuration with a detailed dynamic model and a nonlinear control approach, including actuator failure analysis.

Findings

Successful simulation of the proposed UAV's control performance.

Effective handling of actuator failure scenarios.

Validation of the control algorithm's robustness.

Abstract

In this paper, a new under-actuated Bi-Quadcopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is introduced. The proposed drone configuration can be controlled similar to a Bicopter. The dynamics of the proposed Bi-Quadcopter is developed using the Newton-Euler approach. Using the force decomposition technique, a mapping between the control wrench and actuator inputs is developed. A nonlinear position control is applied for the Bi-Quadcopter using the quaternion-based cascaded attitude controller. The performance of the proposed UAV with the control algorithm is verified through simulations. Finally, the actuator failure scenarios were analyzed.