Design, Modeling and Control of a Composable and Extensible Drone with Tilting Rotors

In this paper, we introduce a composable and extensible drone with tilting rotors (CEDTR). We aimed for a function that could optimally match the load capacity, degree of freedom (DOF), speed and endurance with diverse mission requirements by changing the quantity and form of combinations. First, we propose a decentralized modular controller to allow a team of physically connected modules to fly cooperatively. Second, we divide all the combinations into three categories according to the different control methods. Three generalized control strategies are proposed to control both position and attitude independently by tilting the directions of the propellers. We carried out experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of this mechanical design and control method. The experiment video is available at https://youtu.be/7RvxiV4FPq4.