Ground-Effect-Aware Modeling and Control for Multicopters

The ground effect on multicopters introduces several challenges, such as control errors caused by additional lift, oscillations that may occur during near-ground flight due to external torques, and the influence of ground airflow on models, such as the rotor drag and the mixing matrix. This article collects and analyzes the dynamics data of near-ground multicopter flight through various methods, including force measurement platforms and real-world flights. For the first time, we summarize the mathematical model of the external torque of multicopters under ground effect. The influence of ground airflow on rotor drag and the mixing matrix is also verified through adequate experimentation and analysis. Through simplification and derivation, the differential flatness of the multicopter’s dynamic model under ground effect is confirmed. To mitigate the influence of these disturbance models on control, we propose a control method that combines dynamic inverse and disturbance models, ensuring consistent control effectiveness at both high and low altitudes. In this method, the additional thrust and variations in rotor drag under ground effect are both considered and compensated through feedforward models. The leveling torque of ground effect can be equivalently represented as variations in the center of gravity and the moment of inertia. In this way, the leveling torque does not explicitly appear in the dynamic model. The final experimental results show that the method proposed in this article reduces the control error (RMSE) by 45.3%.