Modeling and Control of a Coaxial Pendulum Drone

Given the high energy utilization efficiency of coaxial drones compared to quadrotors, an inverted pendulum coaxial drone is designed with a focus on its modeling and control. Based on the Lagrangian modeling method, a 6-DoF dynamical model of the pendulum drone is established. The strong coupling and under-actuated nature of the model pose significant control challenges. Controllers suitable for such system are proposed to stabilize the fully-actuated part and the two under-actuated parts of the dynamics, respectively. A theoretical stability analysis of the closed-loop dynamics is presented. Finally, in the simulation examples under static reference, dynamic reference, impulse disturbance and model uncertainties, the effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified, and its superior performance is demonstrated in comparative simulations.