Title: Drone fault tolerance strategy by allowing remaining rotor to pan and tilt

Authors: Zairil Zaludin

Addresses: Department of Aerospace Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang 43400, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract: Quadcopter drones rely on their four rotors to control altitude and attitude. If one rotor fails, the drone loses its ability to maintain control. This paper proposes a solution to improve attitude control in such a scenario by minimising roll, pitch, and yaw deviations when a single rotor has stopped. By enabling opposing motors to pan and tilt independently, the study demonstrates the feasibility of landing the drone safely. The concept explores the idea of thrust vectoring by the individual rotor, which better manages the drone's roll, pitch, and yaw angles, along with their respective rates. The paper includes simulation results and a summary of the performance improvements achieved through this approach.

Keywords: unmanned aerial vehicles; UAV; fault tolerance; quadrotor; quadcopter; quadcopter malfunction; drone; damage control; drone damage control; rotor wing; rotor pan-tilt; drone rotor pan-tilt.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAMECHS.2024.139180

International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems, 2024 Vol.11 No.2, pp.102 - 110

Received: 09 Nov 2023
Accepted: 18 Mar 2024
Published online: 24 Jun 2024 *

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