Fault tolerance analysis of a hexarotor with reconfigurable tilted rotors

Abstract

Tilted rotors in multirotor vehicles have shown to be useful for different practical reasons. For instance, increasing yaw maneuverability or enabling full position and attitude control of hexarotor vehicles. It has also been proven that a hexagon-shaped multirotor is capable of complete attitude and altitude control under failures of one of its rotors. However, when a rotor fails, the torque that can be reached in the worst- case direction decreases considerably.This work proposes to actively change the tilt angle of the rotors when a failure occurs. This rotor reconfiguration increases the maximum torque that can be achieved in the most stressful direction, reducing maneuverability limitations. Experimental validations are shown, where the proposed reconfigurable tilted rotor is used in order to control a hexarotor vehicle when a failure appears mid-flight. The impact of the delay in the reconfiguration when a failure occurs is also addressed.