A Tilting-Rotor Enhanced Quadcopter Fault-Tolerant Control Based on Non-Linear Model Predictive Control

Abstract: This paper proposes a fault-tolerant control strategy based on a tilt-rotor quadcopter prototype, utilizing nonlinear model predictive control to maintain both attitude and position stability in the event of rotor failure. The control strategy employs an extended state observer to predict model deviations following a fault and adjusts the original model in the subsequent time step, thereby achieving active fault-tolerant control. The proposed method is evaluated through simulations and compared to both traditional quadcopter and tilt-rotor quadcopter without observer under identical conditions. The results demonstrate that the tilt-rotor quadcopter can maintain position control without sacrificing yaw stability, unlike traditional quadcopters.