A survey on quadrotors: Configurations, modeling and identification, control, collision avoidance, fault diagnosis and tolerant control

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) offer a wide range of interesting military and commercial applications at reduced costs. A couple of their more interesting characteristics include: They are capable of hovering and flying at high and low speeds, and they can move in any direction and take off and land vertically. A very promising class of these vehicles comprises small vehicles that can be flown either indoor or outdoor and offer the possibility for near-area surveillance, crop dusting, precision farming [1], microwave autonomous copter systems for geological remote sensing as shown in [2], geographic studies, fire monitoring, security applications, search- and-rescue, and attack and rendezvous [3], [4]. However, challenging requirements in terms of size, weight, and maneuverability for these systems are presented in [5]. A type of aircraft with an important and significant potential is the so-called Quadrotor that is considered by most research studies as a promising UAV [6].