Stabilizing and Control of Tilting-Rotor Quadcopter in Case of a Propeller Failure

Abstract

In this paper, stability and control of tilting-rotor quadcopters is presented upon failure of one propeller during flight. A tilting rotor quadcopter provides advantage in terms of additional stable configurations and maneuverability. Upon failure of one propeller, a traditional quadcopter has a tendency of spinning about the primary axis fixed to the vehicle as an outcome of the asymmetry about the yaw axis. This forces the quadcopter to land abandoning its mission. The tilting-rotor configuration is an over-actuated form of a traditional quadcopter and it is capable of handling a propeller failure, thus making it a fault tolerant system. In this paper, a dynamic model of tilting-rotor quadcopter with one propeller failure is derived and a controller is designed to achieve hovering and navigation capability. The simulation results showing the effectiveness of the proposed controller is presented using the translational and hovering motion.