Decoupling attitude and position control of rotary wing aerial aircraft with lateral motors

In this study, a novel rotary-wing model approach has been addressed to facilitate the high-level control of various dynamic systems operating with a rotary-wing aerial vehicle. In addition to the design of conventional four-rotor rotary-wing vehicles, four additional lateral motors have been integrated, and controller designs for the new system have been developed. With this approach, it becomes possible to achieve translational movements or position control without any attitude changes in the roll, pitch, and yaw axes. Furthermore, the rotary-wing vehicle gains the capability to maintain a desired attitude without any position changes. This ability to separately control the vehicle's position and attitude provides significant flexibility in the design and controller algorithms of multi-dynamic systems, such as rotary-wing vehicles taking off and landing from moving platforms or performing tasks alongside a robotic manipulator. Standard PID controllers, as in conventional approaches, have been preferred for the vehicle's attitude and altitude controllers. Since the four lateral rotors used for position control can generate bidirectional thrust, the newly designed position controllers have been optimally designed. This ensures that the controller behavior exhibits similar characteristics in response to different errors. This controller characteristic can be utilized to feed estimation algorithms and improve prediction accuracy in complex dynamic systems. Additionally, by using the torque directly generated by the thrust forces of the four lateral motors around the center of mass, more aggressive orientation control can be achieved for heavy systems.