Fault-Tolerant Systems for Unmanned Multirotor Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

This chapter presents some recent results on fault-tolerant control systems for un-manned aerial systems, inparticular for multirotor-typevehicles, commonly known asdrones. Over the last years, these vehicles have become widely popular. Simplicityand cost-effectiveness have turned out to be very appealing and, as a consequence,an increasing number of applications have risen in many fields such as agriculture,surveillance, and photography, among others. As mission requirements become moredemanding, the matter of fault tolerance emerges as a key challenge, especially if sys-tem certification is sought.Here, the focus is placed particularly on rotor failures in multirotor vehicles, anda specific definition for fault tolerance is considered based on the maneuverabilitycapabilities in case of a failure. A geometric analysis is presented to evaluate the faulttolerantcapabilitiesof agiven vehicle, togetherwithanexperimental validation. Then,the limitationsofthis concept are analyzed. Finally, a novel reconfigurable structure isproposedfor a fault-toleranthexarotor, that presents goodflight performance infailurecases, together with experimental results.