Controllability Analysis for Multirotor Helicopter Rotor Degradation and Failure
This addresses the need for reliable fault-tolerant control in multirotor systems like drones, but it is incremental as it builds on existing controllability concepts for a specific domain.
The paper tackled the problem of controllability analysis for multirotor systems under rotor degradation or failure, showing that classical linear controllability theories are insufficient and introducing a new necessary and sufficient condition with a test procedure, applied to hexacopters to reveal varying fault-tolerant capabilities across configurations.
This paper considers the controllability analysis problem for a class of multirotor systems subject to rotor failure/wear. It is shown that classical controllability theories of linear systems are not sufficient to test the controllability of the considered multirotors. Owing to this, an easy-to-use measurement index is introduced to assess the available control authority. Based on it, a new necessary and sufficient condition for the controllability of multirotors is derived. Furthermore, a controllability test procedure is approached. The proposed controllability test method is applied to a class of hexacopters with different rotor configurations and different rotor efficiency parameters to show its effectiveness. The analysis results show that hexacopters with different rotor configurations have different fault-tolerant capabilities. It is therefore necessary to test the controllability of the multirotors before any fault-tolerant control strategies are employed.