Dynamic Control Allocation for Dual-Tilt UAV Platforms
This work addresses control optimization for UAV platforms with redundant actuators, but it is incremental as it builds on existing hierarchical control methods with specific modeling enhancements.
The paper tackles dynamic control allocation for a hexarotor UAV with dual-tilting propellers in trajectory tracking, presenting a hierarchical control structure that optimizes actuator states and models saturation, validated through numerical simulations.
This paper focuses on dynamic control allocation for a hexarotor UAV platform, considering a trajectory tracking task as as case study. It is assumed that the platform is dual-tilting, meaning that it is able to tilt each propeller independently during flight, along two orthogonal axis. We present a hierarchical control structure composed of a high-level controller generating the required wrench for the tracking task, and a control allocation law ensuring that the actuators produce such wrench. The allocator imposes desired first-order dynamics on the actuators set, and exploits system redundancy to optimize the actuators state with respect to a given objective function. Unlike other studies on the subject, we explicitly model actuator saturation and provide theoretical insights on its effect on control performances. We also investigate the role of propeller tilt angles, by imposing asymmetric shapes in the objective function. Numerical simulations are presented to validate the allocation strategy.