Emergency landing for a quadrotor in case of a propeller failure: A backstepping approach

Abstract

A backstepping approach is proposed in this paper to cope with the failure of a quadrotor propeller. The presented methodology supposes to turn off also the motor which is opposite to the broken one. In this way, a birotor configuration with fixed propellers is achieved. The birotor is controlled to follow a planned emergency landing trajectory. Theory shows that the birotor can reach any point in the Cartesian space losing the possibility to control the yaw angle. Simulation tests are employed to validate the proposed controller design.