Design and Control of an Innovative Overactuated Thrust Vectoring Six-DoF Quadrotor for Extreme and Challenging Environments

The wide spectrum of recent applications for UAVs imposes further challenges to their abilities and control. This is especially true when operating in harsh and hostile environments where disturbances are huge and actuators are prone to failure. Conventional systems and traditional control techniques are not sufficient for stability and tracking under these circumstances. This paper proposes a unique innovative overactuated quadrotor system that has six DoFs. The vehicle has four rotors and each rotor can tilt independently in the YZ-plane. It has the ability to correct its position and attitude in a decoupled way which is different from the conventional quadrotor configurations. Sliding-mode control associated with switching control mode is used for the control algorithm of the system. The system shows agility in the face of large disturbances and robustness against actuator failure which makes it a perfect fit for extreme and challenging environments. The concept of the system and its ability are illustrated in simulation with promising results.