Theoretical and Experimental Study of Recovery Strategy for Dual-Tilt Multirotor

Abstract

Across several fields and applications, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) of Multirotor type are increasingly becoming the solution to solve several real-life problems in both indoor and outdoor environments. A typical approach to utilize multirotor UAVs in a wide range of problems is to utilize a specialized payload for the intended application and deploy it on a conventional multirotor platform. Such payloads could be optical cameras, infrared imaging cameras, radiation sensors, and onboard processing unit. The payload gives the platform the capability to perform data acquisition and autonomous decision-making capabilities. One of the major challenges in multirotor operations is system failure due to motor partial or total malfunction. Such failure results in mission failure as well as system hardware loss. Current mitigation methods rely either on a suboptimal design of the system by adding more than needed motors and propellers or through entering a degraded flight to save the hardware. With such methods, the mission is aborted and considered a failure.

This research investigates an innovative class of multirotors equipped with a dual-tilting mechanism for each individual propulsion subsystem, where all propellers and tilt axes are independently controlled. Such a class of multirotors can handle the total failure of motors; furthermore, this addition enhances the flying capabilities through full six degrees of freedom (6DoF) control. In order to achieve the main objective of continued mission with full 6DoF control in the presence of failure, the feasibility of achieving this objective through such a platform is investigated and the requirements are identified for the platform. Then a control scheme is proposed and studied through simulation. Finally, a platform is developed and tested in real-life to verify the simulation results and the claim of this research.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	American English
Supervisor	NAWAF Al Moosa (Supervisor)