Abstract
Multi-directional aerial platforms can fly in almost any orientation and direction, often maneuvering in ways their underactuated counterparts cannot match. A subset of multi-directional platforms is fully-actuated multirotors, where all six degrees of freedom are independently controlled without redundancies. Fully-actuated multirotors possess much greater freedom of movement than conventional multirotor drones, allowing them to perform complex sensing and manipulation tasks. While there has been comprehensive research on multi-directional multirotor control systems, the spectrum of hardware designs remains fragmented. This letter sets out the hardware design architecture of a fully-actuated quadrotor and its associated control framework. Following the novel platform design, a prototype was built to validate the control scheme and characterize the flight performance. The resulting quadrotor was shown in operation to be capable of holding a stationary hover at 30° incline, and track position commands by thrust vectoring [Video attachment: https://youtu.be/8HOQl_77CVg].
Highlights
U NMANNED Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with multirotor configurations have gained popularity in aerial roboticsManuscript received February 24, 2020; accepted June 24, 2020
The Multi-Terrain Aerial Robotics Arena is supported through a philanthropic gift by Brahmal Vasudevan. (Peter Zheng and Xinkai Tan contributed to this work.) (Corresponding author: Mirko Kovac.)
We introduce the hardware design architecture for the TiltDrone (Fig. 1)
Summary
U NMANNED Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with multirotor configurations have gained popularity in aerial roboticsManuscript received February 24, 2020; accepted June 24, 2020. Date of publication July 20, 2020; date of current version September 15, 2020. This letter was recommended for publication by Associate Editor F. The Multi-Terrain Aerial Robotics Arena is supported through a philanthropic gift by Brahmal Vasudevan. (Peter Zheng and Xinkai Tan contributed to this work.) (Corresponding author: Mirko Kovac.) The Multi-Terrain Aerial Robotics Arena is supported through a philanthropic gift by Brahmal Vasudevan. (Peter Zheng and Xinkai Tan contributed to this work.) (Corresponding author: Mirko Kovac.)
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