A Novel Overactuated Quadrotor: Prototype Design, Modeling, and Control

Traditional multirotor UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are inherently underactuated, with coupled position and attitude control, which limits their maneuverability in specific applications. This paper presents a fully actuated quadrotor design based on a swashplateless rotor mechanism. Unlike existi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhan Zhang, Yan Li, Hengzhi Jiang, Jieqi Li, Zhong Wang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-04-01
Series:Actuators
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0825/14/5/223
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Summary:Traditional multirotor UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are inherently underactuated, with coupled position and attitude control, which limits their maneuverability in specific applications. This paper presents a fully actuated quadrotor design based on a swashplateless rotor mechanism. Unlike existing fully actuated UAV designs that rely on servo-driven tilt mechanisms, this approach minimizes additional weight and simplifies the structure, resulting in a more maintainable system. The design, modeling, and control strategies for the quadrotor are presented. Furthermore, we propose a decoupled control method to address the need for both fully actuated and underactuated modes. The control architecture employs parallel attitude and position control structures and decouples the two subsystems using a nonlinear dynamic inversion (NDI) method. A compensation module is introduced to address the constraints imposed by the maximum rotor deflection angle and the corresponding feasible force set. This compensation module actively adjusts the attitude to mitigate the saturation of the required thrust, effectively overcoming the impact of rotor deflection angle limitations on trajectory tracking performance. The approach facilitates seamless switching between fully actuated and underactuated modes, enhancing the system’s flexibility and robustness. Simulation and flight experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed design.
ISSN:2076-0825