@article{4b61945ef96144c98b22ad644b49f726,
title = "An Innovative Tri-rotor Drone and Associated Distributed Aerial Drone Swarm Control",
abstract = "This paper presents a novel unmanned aerial vehicle platform based on a three rotor configuration, which can achieve the highest level of maneuverability in all 6 dimensions (i.e. 3D position and 3D attitude). The three propellers can be tilted independently to obtain full force and torque vectoring authority, such that this new aerial robotic platform can overcome the limitations of a classic quadrotor UAV that cannot change its attitude while hovering at a stationary position. A robust feedback linearization controller is developed to deal with this highly coupled and nonlinear dynamics of the proposed tri-rotor UAV, which linearizes the dynamics globally using geometric transformations to produce a linear model that matches the Jacobi linearization of the nonlinear dynamics at the operating point of interest. A distributed formation control tracking protocol is then proposed to control a swarm of tri-rotor UAVs. The 3D position and 3D attitude of each vehicle can be controlled independently to follow a desired time-varying formation. The effectiveness of the designed control strategy is illustrated in a realistic virtual reality simulation environment based on real hardware parameters from a physical construction.",
keywords = "Aerial robotics, Distributed systems, Formation control, Multi-agent, Optimal control, Unmanned aerial vehicles",
author = "Junyan Hu and Alexander Lanzon",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [grant number EP/R008876/1] . All research data supporting this publication are directly available within this publication. Junyan Hu received the B.Eng degree in Automation from Hefei University of Technology in 2015 and M.Sc. degree in Advanced Control and System Engineering from the University of Manchester in 2016, where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. His research interests include distributed/formation control of multi-agent dynamical systems and control application for innovative aerial vehicles. Alexander Lanzon received his Ph.D. degree in Control Engineering and his M.Phil. degree in Robot Control from the University of Cambridge in 2000 and 1997 respectively and received his B.Eng.(Hons). degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Malta in 1995. Alexander held academic positions at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Australian National University, and industrial posts at ST-Microelectronics (Malta) Ltd., Yaskawa Denki (Tokyo) Ltd. and National ICT Australia Ltd., before joining the University of Manchester in 2006 where he now holds the Chair in Control Engineering. Alexander is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the Institute of Measurement and Control and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. He is also an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and has served as a Subject Editor of the International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control. His research interests include negative imaginary systems, robust control, fundamentals of feedback control theory, distributed/consensus control of multi-agent dynamical systems, and control applications for innovative aerial drones, robotics and mechatronic systems. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 Elsevier B.V. Copyright: Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",
year = "2018",
month = may,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1016/j.robot.2018.02.019",
language = "English",
volume = "103",
pages = "162--174",
journal = "Robotics and Autonomous Systems",
issn = "0921-8890",
publisher = "Elsevier BV",
}