Control Allocation of Over-Actuated Tilt-Rotor Quadcopters with Aerodynamic Interactions

In this paper, the problem of control allocation for over-actuated tilt-rotor quadcopters in the presence of aerodynamic interaction is studied. One of the main challenges of having a higher number of actuators with respect to the degrees of freedom, is the redundancy which requires an input allocation strategy. In this work, a specific design of a tilt-rotor quadcopter is considered with twelve inputs: four for the magnitude of the thrust of the propellers and eight for the direction of the thrust. However, for simplicity, a 2D motion of this quadcopter in X-Z plane is studied. Therefore, in this simplified case, there are four inputs: two for the magnitude of the thrust and two for the direction of the thrust. First, the control allocation problem of a single tilt-rotor quadcopter is studied. Then, the allocation problem is studied with aerodynamic interaction of two quadcopters flying in close proximity of each other.