Fault Tolerance Analysis for a Class of Reconfigurable Aerial Hexarotor Vehicles

Several works have addressed the issue of fault tolerance in multirotors in case of a rotor total failure, particularly their ability to keep full independent control of attitude and altitude. It has been proven that to achieve this, a minimum of six rotors is needed. In this article, the performance of several standard and nonstandard hexarotor structures is analyzed, both for a nominal case (without failure) and in the case where one of the actuators is under failure (incapability to exert thrust). The performance is shown in terms of maximum rotational torque and vertical force that the vehicle can exert. The main contribution of this article is the proposal and analysis of converting these vehicles into reconfigurable ones through the addition of a minimum number of servomotors, to deal with failures and to greatly improve the maneuverability under these conditions, in order to identify the reconfigurable structure with the best performance. An experimental demonstration in an outdoor environment is shown for the proposed reconfigurable structure with best performance in case of a full rotor failure.