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Controllability Analysis and Degraded Control for a Class of Hexacopters Subject to Rotor Failures

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Abstract

This paper considers the controllability analysis and fault tolerant control problem for a class of hexacopters. It is shown that the considered hexacopter is uncontrollable when one rotor fails, even though the hexacopter is over-actuated and its controllability matrix is row full rank. According to this, a fault tolerant control strategy is proposed to control a degraded system, where the yaw states of the considered hexacopter are ignored. Theoretical analysis indicates that the degraded system is controllable if and only if the maximum lift of each rotor is greater than a certain value. The simulation and experiment results on a prototype hexacopter show the feasibility of our controllability analysis and degraded control strategy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Automatic Control, Beihang University, No. 37, Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100191, People’s Republic of China

    Guang-Xun Du, Quan Quan & Kai-Yuan Cai

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  1. Guang-Xun Du
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  2. Quan Quan
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  3. Kai-Yuan Cai
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Correspondence to Guang-Xun Du.

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Du, GX., Quan, Q. & Cai, KY. Controllability Analysis and Degraded Control for a Class of Hexacopters Subject to Rotor Failures. J Intell Robot Syst 78, 143–157 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-014-0103-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-014-0103-0

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