Design and Control of a Novel 5-DoF Tilt-Rotor Quadcopter

This paper presents a novel 5-DoF (degrees of freedom) tilt-rotor quadcopter. Compared to traditional quadcopters, the vehicle offers more DoF by adding two servo-driven mechanisms. The extra DoF allow it to move at a constant pitch angle, thus adapting it to more scenarios, such as slope landings. In addition, the proposed tilt-rotor quadcopter can generate greater torque around the z-axis of the body coordinate system. This gives it an advantage in some scenarios, such as carrying a manipulator to turn valves in the air. In this paper, we first design and model the proposed tilt-rotor quadcopter. Then, we design the controller and control allocation algorithm for the proposed tilt-rotor quadcopter. The control allocation algorithm has clear analytical solutions, which benefits its implementation and deployment. Finally, the structure and control strategy of the tilt-rotor quadcopter are validated by an experiment.