Attainable Force Approximation and Full-Pose Tracking Control of an Over-Actuated Thrust-Vectoring Modular Team UAV

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel control approach for modular UAVs with thrust-vectoring, enabling full-pose tracking by approximating the attainable force space and ensuring feasible control forces, demonstrated through simulations and experiments.

Contribution

It proposes an approximation method for the attainable force space and a full-pose tracking controller for over-actuated UAV teams with thrust-vectoring mechanisms.

Findings

Successful tilting motion during hovering in simulations and experiments.

The control approach guarantees feasible control forces across different configurations.

Enhanced mobility and efficiency over traditional VTOL aircraft.

Abstract

Traditional vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft can not achieve optimal efficiency for various payload weights and has limited mobility due to its under-actuation. With the thrust-vectoring mechanism, the proposed modular team UAV is fully actuated at certain attitudes. However, the attainable force space (AFS) differs according to the team configuration, which makes the controller design difficult. We propose an approximation to the AFS and a full-pose tracking controller with an attitude planner and a force projection, which guarantees the control force is feasible. The proposed approach can be applied to UAVs having multiple thrust-vectoring effectors with homogeneous agents. The simulation and experiment demonstrate a tilting motion during hovering for a 4-agent team.