Enhancing VTOL Multirotor Performance With a Passive Rotor Tilting Mechanism
Date
2021-04Keywords
Urban air mobility (UAM)
Airtaxi
Fully actuated vehicle
VTOL
LQR
Optimal control
Wind gusts
Rotor failure
Vehicle performance metrics
Universal joint
Abstract
This article discusses the benefits of introducing a simple passive mechanism to enable rotor tilting in Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) multirotor vehicles. Such a system is evaluated in relevant Urban Air Mobility (UAM) passenger transport scenarios such as hovering in wind conditions and overcoming rotor failures. While conventional parallel axis multirotors are underactuated systems, the proposed mechanism makes the vehicle fully actuated in SE(3), which implies independent cabin position and orientation control. An accurate vehicle simulator with realistic parameters is presented to compare in simulation the proposed architecture with a conventional underactuated VTOL vehicle that shares the same physical properties. In order to make fair comparisons, controllers are obtained solving an optimization problem in which the cost function of both systems is chosen to be equivalent. In particular, the control laws are Linear-Quadratic Regulators (LQR), which are derived by linearizing ...
Type
journal article