Trajectory Generation for Underactuated Multirotor Vehicles with Tilted Propellers via a Flatness-based Method

Abstract: This paper considers a class of rotary-wing aerial robots with unaligned propellers. By studying the dynamics of these vehicles, we show that the position and heading angle remain flat outputs of the system (similar to conventional quadrotors). The implication is that they can be commanded to follow desired trajectory setpoints in 3D space. We propose a numerical strategy based on the collocation method to facilitate the trajectory generation. This enables convenient computation of the nominal robot's attitude and control inputs. The proposed methods are numerically verified for three multirotor robots with different dynamics. These include a tricopter with a tilting propeller, and a quadrotor and a hexacopter with unparalleled propellers.