Rotor Dynamics and Control Applications in a 6 Degree of Freedom Twist-Tilt Quadcopter
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Rotor Dynamics and Control Applications in a 6 Degree of Freedom Twist-Tilt Quadcopter

Abstract

One of the biggest shortcomings of traditional quadcopters is that they are underactuatedwith control over only 4 out of a possible 6 degrees of freedom. The user may control translations in all three axes as well as a single rotation in the Z axis, otherwise known as yaw. A handful of designs have been introduced in the field to gain control of the two remaining degrees of freedom, as gaining control of them would mean complete control over the quadcopter’s attitude and position, a useful feature in certain applications. This work delves deeper into a design introduced in a previous work, of an overactuated quadcopter design with twelve system inputs, where each arm has 3 control inputs – propeller speed, a twist angle, and a tilt angle. A system identification of the quadcopter is completed using an experimental setup that dissects the quadcopter into a modular part – a single- arm. Furthermore, a multibody dynamic simulation of the complete quadcopter is created which accounts for the system’s mass distribution, moments of inertia, and low level motor dynamics which were simplified or ignored in previous work. In addition to the previously proposed control scheme, a new scheme is also introduced which simplifies the system into a 6 input to 6 output system, thus creating a more simple and elegant control scheme. Both control schemes are tested in simulation and experiment with success.

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