Browsing by Author "Iglesias, Inaki"
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Item Enhancing VTOL Multirotor Performance With a Passive Rotor Tilting Mechanism(2021-04) Iriarte, Imanol; Iglesias, Inaki; Lasa, Joseba; Calvo-Soraluze, Hodei; Sierra, Basilio; INNOV_AIR_MOBILThis 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 the systems around hover. It is shown through extensive simulation that the introduction of a passive rotor tilting mechanism based on universal joints improves performance metrics such as vehicle stability, power consumption, passenger comfort and position tracking precision in nominal flight conditions and it does not compromise vehicle safety in rotor failure situations.Item Modeling and control of an overactuated aerial vehicle with four tiltable quadrotors attached by means of passive universal joints(IEEE, 2020-10) Iriarte, Imanol; Otaola, Erlantz; Culla, David; Iglesias, Inaki; Lasa, Joseba; Sierra, Basilio; INNOV_AIR_MOBIL; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; MAQUINASWe present a novel overactuated aerial vehicle based on four quadrotors connected to an airframe by means of passive universal joints. The proposed architecture allows to independently control the six degrees of freedom of the airframe without having fixed propellers at inefficient configurations or making use of dedicated rotor tilting actuators. After deriving the dynamic equations that describe its motion, we propose a linear control strategy that is able to successfully decouple rotation and translation, relying exclusively on on-board sensors. A prototype is built and preliminary experimental results demonstrate that the concept is feasible.Video: https://youtu.be/9ASP3FyhCJw.