We study a trajectory tracking problem for a multi-rotor in the presence of modeling error and external disturbances. The desired trajectory is unknown and generated from a reference system with unknown or partially known dynamics. We assume that only position and orientation measurements for the multi-rotor and position measurements for the reference system can be accessed. We adopt an extended high-gain observer (EHGO) estimation framework to estimate the feed-forward term required for trajectory tracking, the multi-rotor states, as well as modeling error and external disturbances. We design an output feedback controller for trajectory tracking that comprises a feedback linearizing controller and the EHGO. We rigorously analyze the proposed controller and establish its stability properties. Finally, we numerically illustrate our theoretical results using the example of a multi-rotor landing on a ground vehicle.
In this paper, we introduce a translational force control method with disturbance observer (DOB)-based force disturbance cancellation for precise three-dimensional acceleration control of a multi-rotor UAV. The acceleration control of the multi-rotor requires conversion of the desired acceleration signal to the desired roll, pitch, and total thrust. But because the attitude dynamics and the thrust dynamics are different, simple kinematic signal conversion without consideration of those difference can cause serious performance degradation in acceleration tracking. Unlike most existing translati…
Inner Mongolia University（内蒙古大学）；Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute（成都飞机设计研究所）
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have various advantages, but their practical applications are influenced by their limited energy. Therefore, it is important to manage their power consumption and also important to establish corresponding power consumption models. However, most of existing works either establish theoretical power consumption models for fixed-wing UAVs and single-rotor UAVs, or provide heuristic power consumption models for multi-rotor UAVs without rigorous mathematical derivations. This paper aims to establish theoretical power consumption models for multi-rotor UAVs. To be spec…
University of Cincinnati（辛辛那提大学）；Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur（印度理工学院坎普尔分校）
In this paper, we present an autonomous flight controller for a quadcopter with thrust vectoring capabilities. This UAV falls in the category of multirotors with tilt-motion enabled rotors. Since the vehicle considered is over-actuated in nature, the dynamics and control allocation have to be analysed carefully. Moreover, the possibility of hovering at large attitude maneuvers of this novel vehicle requires singularity-free attitude control. Hence, quaternion state feedback is utilized to compute the control commands for the UAV motors while avoiding the gimbal lock condition experienced by Eu…
In this paper, we present a novel developmental reinforcement learning-based controller for a quadcopter with thrust vectoring capabilities. This multirotor UAV design has tilt-enabled rotors. It utilizes the rotor force magnitude and direction to achieve the desired state during flight. The control policy of this robot is learned using the policy transfer from the learned controller of the quadcopter (comparatively simple UAV design without thrust vectoring). This approach allows learning a control policy for systems with multiple inputs and multiple outputs. The performance of the learned po…
Enabling vertical take-off and landing while providing the ability to fly long ranges opens the door to a wide range of new real-world aircraft applications while improving many existing tasks. Tiltrotor vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are a better choice than fixed-wing and multirotor aircraft for such applications. Prior works on these aircraft have addressed aerodynamic performance, design, modeling, and control. However, a less explored area is the study of their potential fault tolerance due to their inherent redundancy, which allows them to tolerate s…
Urban Air Mobility (UAM), or the scenario where multiple manned and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) carry out various tasks over urban airspaces, is a transportation concept of the future that is gaining prominence. UAM missions with complex spatial, temporal and reactive requirements can be succinctly represented using Signal Temporal Logic (STL), a behavioral specification language. However, planning and control of systems with STL specifications is computationally intensive, usually resulting in planning approaches that do not guarantee dynamical feasibility, or control approaches that cann…
Beijing Institute of Aerospace Systems Engineering（北京航天系统工程研究所）；Flying College, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学飞行学院）；China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology（中国运载火箭技术研究院）；College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University（同济大学建筑与城市规划学院）；College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology（国防科技大学智能科学学院）
A customizable multi-rotor UAVs simulation platform based on ROS, Gazebo and PX4 is presented. The platform, which is called XTDrone, integrates dynamic models, sensor models, control algorithm, state estimation algorithm, and 3D scenes. The platform supports multi UAVs and other robots. The platform is modular and each module can be modified, which means that users can test its own algorithm, such as SLAM, object detection, motion planning, attitude control, multi-UAV cooperation, and cooperation with other robots on the platform. The platform runs in lockstep, so the simulation speed can be …
Virginia Tech（弗吉尼亚理工大学）；University of Maryland（马里兰大学）；University of Genoa（热那亚大学）
We develop an effective computer model to simulate sensing environments that consist of natural trees. The simulated environments are random and contain full geometry of the tree foliage. While this simulated model can be used as a general platform for studying the sensing mechanism of different flying species, our ultimate goal is to build bat-inspired Quad-rotor UAVs- UAVs that can recreate bat's flying behavior (e.g., obstacle avoidance, path planning) in dense vegetation. To this end, we also introduce an foliage echo simulator that can produce simulated echoes by mimicking bat's biosonar.…
Accurate Control under Voltage Drop for Rotor Drones
Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；School of Aeronautic Science and Engineering, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学航空科学与工程学院）；School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学自动化科学与电气工程学院）；School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学网络空间科学与技术学院）；Hangzhou Innovation Institute, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学杭州创新研究院）
Autonomous Docking of Multi-Rotor UAVs on Blimps under the Influence of Wind Gusts
University of Stuttgart, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering and Geodesy, Institute of Flight Mechanics and Control (iFR), Flight Robotics and Perception Group (FRPG)（斯图加特大学航空航天工程与大地测量学院飞行力学与控制研究所飞行机器人与感知组）；Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Perceiving Systems Department（马克斯·普朗克智能系统研究所图宾根感知系统部门）
Center for Research in Optics（光学研究中心）；Universidad Tecnológica de León（莱昂理工大学）
In this paper, we develop a functional Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), capable of tracking an object using a Machine Learning-like vision system called Haar feature-based cascade classifier. The image processing is made on-board with a high processor single-board computer. Based on the detected object and its position, the quadrotor must track it in order to be in a centered position and in a safe distance to it. The object in question is a human face; the experiments were conducted in a two-step detection, searching first for the upper-body and then searching for the face inside of the human b…
A UAV-Mounted Sensor Network for Close-Range Inspection of Wind Turbine Rotor Blades
Department of Computer Science XVII: Robotics Julius-Maximilians Universit\" a t W\" u rzburg W\" u rzburg, Germany；Research；Elektronik-Entwicklung Oktopus GmbH Kiel, Germany
Suspended Load Path Tracking Control Using a Tilt-rotor UAV Based on Zonotopic State Estimation
Graduate Program in Electrical Engineering, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-901, Brazil（巴西联邦矿务工程师学院电气工程研究生项目）；Department of Electronics Engineering, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-901, Brazil（巴西联邦矿务工程师学院电子工程系）
Conventional quadrotors received great attention in trajectory design and fault-tolerant control in these years. The direction of each thrust is perpendicular to the body because of the geometrics in mechanical design. Comparing with the conventional quadrotor, a novel quadrotor named quad-tilt-rotor brings better freedom in manipulating the thrust vector. Quad-tilt-rotor augments the additional degrees of freedom in the thrust, providing the possibility of violating the normal direction of the thrust in the conventional quadrotor. This provides the ability of greater agility in control. This …
Droneulator: A Portable UAV Simulator for Agricultural Workflows with RotorPy and Godot 4
Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS), University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK（林肯自主系统中心（L-CAS）、林肯大学、林肯，英国）；Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, MAVLab, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Delft, Netherlands（航空航天工程学院、MAVLab、代尔夫特理工大学（TU Delft）、代尔夫特，荷兰）
Institut Teknologi Bandung（万隆理工学院）；Research and Development Center Global Asia Teknologi（全球亚洲科技研发中心）
A rotorcraft-based unmanned aerial vehicle exhibits more complex properties compared to its full-size counterparts due to its increased sensitivity to control inputs and disturbances and higher bandwidth of its dynamics. As an aerial vehicle with vertical take-off and landing capability, the helicopter specifically poses a difficult problem of transition between forward flight and unstable hover and vice versa. The LPV control technique explicitly takes into account the change in performance due to the real-time parameter variations. The technique therefore theoretically guarantees the perform…
Reshaping UAV-Enabled Communications with Omnidirectional Multi-Rotor Aerial Vehicles
College of Computing, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University（穆罕默德六世理工大学计算机学院）；Czech Technical University in Prague（捷克布拉格技术大学）；International University of Rabat（拉巴特国际大学）
Redundant Observer-Based Tracking Control for Object Extraction Using a Cable Connected UAV
Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, Loughborough University（航空与汽车工程系，洛桑大学）；Department of Computer Science, University College London（计算机科学系，伦敦大学学院）；Department Of Computer Science, University of Liverpool（计算机科学系，利物浦大学）
Enhanced UAV Navigation Systems through Sensor Fusion with Trident Quaternions
Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de Buenos Aires（布宜诺斯艾利斯大学工程学院）；Universidad de San Andrés and CONICET（圣安德烈斯大学和CONICET）；Centro de Automática y Robótica (CAR, UPM-CSIC)（自动化与机器人中心（CAR，UPM-CSIC））
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has already demonstrated its potential in many civilian applications, and the façade inspection is among the most promising ones. In this paper, we focus on enabling the autonomous perception and control of a small UAV for a façade inspection task. Specifically, we consider the perception as a planar object pose estimation problem by simplifying the building structure as concatenation of planes, and the control as an optimal reference tracking control problem. First, a vision based adaptive observer is proposed which can realize stable plane pose estimation under …
Conventional Feedback-Linearization-based controller, applied to the tilt-rotor (eight inputs), results in the extensive changes in the tilting angles, which are not expected in practice. To solve this problem, we introduce the novel concept UAV gait to restrict the tilting angles. The gait plan was initially to solve the control problems for quadruped (four-legged) robots. Transplanting this approach, accompanied by feedback linearization, to the tiltrotor may cause the well-known non-invertible problem in the decoupling matrix. In this research, we explore the invertible gait for the tiltrot…
Queensland University of Technology（昆士兰科技大学）；Data61 / CSIRO（Data61 / 联邦科学与工业研究组织）；Griffith University（格里菲斯大学）
The use of multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for search and rescue as well as remote sensing is rapidly increasing. Multi-rotor UAVs, however, have limited endurance. The range of UAV applications can be widened if teams of multiple UAVs are used. We propose a framework for a team of UAVs to cooperatively explore and find a target in complex GPS-denied environments with obstacles. The team of UAVs autonomously navigates, explores, detects, and finds the target in a cluttered environment with a known map. Examples of such environments include indoor scenarios, urban or natural canyons…
This work proposes a systematic framework for modelling and controller design of a Commercial-Off-The Shelf (COTS) unmanned rotorcraft using control theory and principles, for brick wall construction. With point to point navigation as the primary application, command velocities in the three axes of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) are considered as inputs of the system while its actual velocities are system outputs. Using the sine and step response data acquired from a Hardware-in-Loop (HiL) test simulator, the considered system was modelled in individual axes with the help of the proposed fr…
With the characteristics of vertical take-off and landing and long endurance, tiltrotor has attracted considerable attention in recent decades for its potential applications in civil and scientific research. However, the problems of strong couplings, nonlinear characteristics and mismatched disturbances inevitably exist in the tiltrotor, which bring great challenges to the controller design in transition mode. In this paper, we combined a super-twisting extended state observer (STESO) with an adaptive recursive sliding mode control (ARSMC) together to design a tiltrotor aircraft attitude syste…
University of Regina（里贾纳大学）；Ryerson University（瑞尔森大学）
Rotary-wing flying machines draw attention within the UAV community for their in-place hovering capability, and recently, holonomic motion over fixed-wings. In this paper, we investigate about the power-optimality in a mono-spinner, i.e., a class of rotary-wing UAVs with one rotor only, whose main body has a streamlined shape for producing additional lift when counter-spinning the rotor. We provide a detailed dynamic model of our mono-spinner. Two configurations are studied: (1) a symmetric configuration, in which the rotor is aligned with the fuselage's COM, and (2) an asymmetric configuratio…
Indian Institute of Science（印度科学学院）；Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur（印度理工学院卡拉格普尔分校）
The notion of safety in multi-agent systems assumes great significance in many emerging collaborative multi-robot applications. In this paper, we present a multi-UAV collaborative target-tracking application by defining bounded inter-UAV distances in the formation in order to ensure safe operation. In doing so, we address the problem of prioritizing specific objectives over others in a multi-objective control framework. We propose a barrier Lyapunov function-based distributed control law to enforce the bounds on the distances and assess its Lyapunov stability using a kinematic model. The theor…
Rylls tilt-rotor is a UAV with eight inputs; the four magnitudes of the thrusts as well as four tilting angles of the thrusts can be specified in need, e.g., based on a control rule. Despite of the success in simulation, conventional feedback linearization witnesses the over-intensive change in the inputs while applying to stabilize Rylls tilt-rotor. Our previous research thus put the extra procedure named gait plan forward to suppress the unexpected changes in the tilting angles. Accompanying the Two Color Map Theorem, the tilting-angles are planned robustly and continuously. The designed gai…
FLOAT Drone for Physical Interaction: Lateral Airflow Reduction, Wrench Modeling, and Adaptive Control
Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University（浙江大学控制科学与工程学院网络系统与控制研究所）；Differential Robotics Technology Company（差分机器人技术公司）
Université de Technologie de Compiègne（贡比涅技术大学）；Inria（法国国家信息与自动化研究所）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Université de Lorraine（洛林大学）；Aix Marseille Université（艾克斯-马赛大学）
Miniature multi-rotors are promising robots for navigating subterranean networks, but maintaining a radio connection underground is challenging. In this paper, we introduce a distributed algorithm, called U-Chain (for Underground-chain), that coordinates a chain of flying robots between an exploration drone and an operator. Our algorithm only uses the measurement of the signal quality between two successive robots as well as an estimate of the ground speed based on an optic flow sensor. We evaluate our approach formally and in simulation, and we describe experimental results with a chain of 3 …
A Reflectance Transformation Imaging technique (RTI) realized by multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with a focus on deployment in difficult to access buildings is presented in this letter. RTI is a computational photographic method that captures a surface shape and color of a subject and enables its interactive re-lighting from any direction in a software viewer, revealing details that are not visible with the naked eye. The input of RTI is a set of images captured by a static camera, each one under illumination from a different known direction. We present an innovative approach apply…
This paper proposes an adaptive tracking strategy with mass-inertia estimation for aerial transportation problems of multi-rotor UAVs. The dynamic model of multi-rotor UAVs with disturbances is firstly developed with a linearly parameterized form. Subsequently, a cascade controller with the robust integral of the sign of the error (RISE) terms is applied to smooth the control inputs and address bounded disturbances. Then, adaptive estimation laws for mass-inertia parameters are designed based on a filter operation. Such operation is introduced to extract estimation errors exploited to theoreti…
Collaborative target-tracking control using multiple autonomous fixed-wing UAVs with constant speeds
Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology（埃因霍温理工大学电子工程系）；Universidad Complutense de Madrid（马德里complutense大学）；Research School of Electrical, Energy and Material Engineering, Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学电气、能源和材料工程研究学校）；Optus-Curtin Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, Curtin University（Curtin大学人工智能卓越中心）
