Omnimorph is a novel multirotor UAV characterized by the possibility of switching between underactuated to fully actuated and omnidirectional flight modes by synchronous tilting of all its 8 propellers. This allows compromising between dexterity and energy efficiency. The omnimorph design and a novel control law have been proposed in [1]. Many open research questions are still open and this assignment focuses on answering the following.
- Omnimorph design is, as explained in [1], inspired by the optimized design proposed in [2]. However, some design changes have been made to simplify the mechanical realization of Omnimorph. What is the effect of these changes in terms of feasible force and torque sets compared to the case in [2]?
- In [1], a novel, optimization-based control law has been proposed for Omnimorph and tested in simulation successfully. However, in the real prototype, it was found that the propeller performance is dependent on the tilting angle. Having an accurate model of the propeller performance degradation is not trivial. How to mitigate the effect of this uncertainty in the closed-loop trajectory-controller system?
- How much does the behavior of the controlled real platform differ from the simulated one in terms of position and attitude errors? To answer this question, the control on the real platform with fixedly tilted propellers must be tested. Hence, results should be compared with numerical simulations with fixed tilting angles, as well.
References:
[1] Aboudorra, Y., Gabellieri, C., Brantjes, R., Sablé, Q., & Franchi, A. (2023). Modelling, Analysis and Control of OmniMorph: an Omnidirectional Morphing Multi-rotor UAV. arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.16871.
[2] Brescianini, D., & D'Andrea, R. (2016, May). Design, modelling and control of an omnidirectional aerial vehicle. In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (pp. 3261-3266). IEEE.