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Modeling and simulation of quadrotor UAV with tilting rotors

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  • Robot and Applications
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Abstract

Quadrotors have recently been drawing greater research and commercial attention to the point that they have become one of the most popular types of unmanned aerial vehicles. Their applications vary from entertainment to transportation, commercial and even military applications. In this paper, a novel quadrotor design is proposed. The design decouples all motions by allowing each rotor to tilt in two directions about the quadrotor fixed frame. This modification improves the stability and safety of the quadrotor and gives it more manoeuvrability and robustness. The mathematical model of the proposed system is carried out using Newton-Euler technique. Several flight scenarios are also simulated under a simple PID controller to illustrate the superiority over conventional quadrotor designs.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Systems Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia

    Mahmoud Elfeky, Moustafa Elshafei & Abdul-Wahid A. Saif

  2. Technical and Industrial Service Co (TISCO), PO Box 38595, Dhahran, 31942, Saudi Arabia

    Mohamed F. Al-Malki

Authors
  1. Mahmoud Elfeky
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  2. Moustafa Elshafei
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  3. Abdul-Wahid A. Saif
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  4. Mohamed F. Al-Malki
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mahmoud Elfeky.

Additional information

Recommended by Associate Editor Wen-Hua Chen under the direction of Editor Hyouk Ryeol Choi. The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the deanship of scientific research at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals under project IN 100036.

Mahmoud Elfeky received his B.S. and M.S. in Control Systems Engineering from KFUPM. Research areas include robotics, unmanned aerial vehicles design, navigation and control, nonlinear control and optimization, model predictive control and leak detection. He’s the inventor/coinventor of two patents the author of several research papers.

Moustafa Elshafei obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from McGill in 1982 (Dean List), Canada. Since then he has accumulated over 24 years of Academic experience and 9 years of industrial experience. He is inventor/coinventor of 20 USA and international patents, Author/Co-author of 3 books, and published over 150 articles in international journals and professional conferences in the fields of intelligent instrumentation, digital signal processing, artificial intelligence, and industrial control/automation systems.

Abdul-Wahid A. Saif received his Ph.D. from Control and Instrumentation Group, Department of Engineering, Leicester University, U.K. Dr. Saif is currently an Associate Professor of Control and Instrumentation at KFUPM. Research interests are Simultaneous and Strong Stabilization, Robust Control and optimization and Networked Control. Dr. Saif has published more than 75 papers in reputable journals and conferences.

Mohammad Al-Malki received his Ph.D. from the university of leicester in 2005. His research interests include design of air vehicle, flight control systems, guidance, navigation and autopilot design. Dr. Malki is inventor/coinventor of 3 patents and author of Fault-Tolerant Flight Control: System Design with Application to Bell-205 Helicopter.

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Elfeky, M., Elshafei, M., Saif, AW.A. et al. Modeling and simulation of quadrotor UAV with tilting rotors. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 14, 1047–1055 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-015-0064-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-015-0064-5

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