• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.10
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• pp.1023-1030
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• 2015

The purpose of this paper is to present the basic mathematical modeling of a hexacopter, which could be used to develop proper methods for stabilization and trajectory control. A hexacopter consists of six rotors with three pairs of counter-rotating fixed-pitch blades. This mechanism is an under-actuated, dynamically unstable, six-degrees-of-freedom system. The whole motion of this object consists of translational and rotational motion in three dimensions, where the translational motion is created by changing the direction and magnitude of the upward propeller thrust. The hexacopter is controlled by adjusting the angular velocities of the rotors, which are spun by electric motors. It is assumed to be a rigid body; thus, the differential equation of the hexacopter dynamics can be derived from the Newton-Euler equation. The Euler-angle parametrization of the three-dimensional rotations contains singular points in the coordinate space that can cause failure of both the dynamical model and control. In order to avoid singularities, the rotations of the hexacopter are parametrized in terms of quaternions. This choice has been made considering the linearity of the quaternion formulation and their stability and efficiency. Further, control simulation of a hexacopter applying cascaded-PID control is also presented in this paper.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.519-523
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• 2016

This paper proposes a method of estimating the actuator faults of a hexacopter without using encoders when one or more of six actuators do not operate normally. In the case of the hexacopter, a Pseudo-Inverse matrix is generally used to obtain the rotational speed of the actuators because the matrix that transforms the rotational speed of the actuators into the thrust and torque of the body coordinate system is not a square matrix. However, the method based on the Pseudo-Inverse matrix cannot detect the actuator faults correctly because the Pseudo-Inverse matrix is approximate. In the proposed method, the actuator faults are estimated by modifying the transform matrix using the property that the actuators of the hexacopter are symmetrical. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method when faults occur in one or more of the six actuators.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.54-63
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• 2016

A novel attitude tacking control method using Time Delay Control (TDC) scheme is developed to provide robust controllability of a rigid hexacopter in case of single or multiple rotor faults. When the TDC scheme is developed, the rotor faults such as the abrupt and/or incipient rotor faults are considered as model uncertainties. The kinematics, modeling of rigid dynamics of hexacopter, and design of stability and controllability augmentation system (SCAS) are addressed rigorously in this paper. In order to compare the developed control scheme to a conventional control method, a nonlinear numerical simulation has been performed and the attitude tracking performance has been compared between the two methods considering the single and multiple rotor faults cases. The developed control scheme shows superior stability and robust controllability of a hexacopter that is subjected to one or multiple rotor faults and external disturbance, i.e., wind shear, gust, and turbulence.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.266-272
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• 2019

Multicopters have become more popular since they are advantageous in their ability to take off and land vertically. In order to guarantee the normal operations of such multicopters, the problem of fault detection and isolation is very important. In this paper, a new method for detecting and isolating an actuator fault of a hexacopter is proposed based on the analytical approach. The residual is newly defined using the angular velocities of actuators estimated by the mathematical model and an actuator fault is detected comparing the residuals to a threshold. And a fault is isolated combining a dynamic model and generated residuals when a fault is detected. The proposed method is a simple, but effective technique because it is based on mathematical model. The results of the computer simulation are also given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm in case of a single failure.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.53-59
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• 2022

In this study, an experimental device was fabricated to evaluate the hovering flight performance of a single rotor on a hexacopter used for river surveillance, and a thrust performance test was conducted. In addition, the 3D profile of the propeller was extracted by 3D scanning and CFD analysis was performed using ANSYS CFD 14.5 based on the extracted 3D model of the propeller. The aerodynamic characteristics were compared with the results of the performance tests and CFD analysis, and the vortex structure corresponding to each motor rotational speed in revolutions per minute (rpm) was identified. In the future, we plan to provide valuable data for multicopter propeller design and performance verification.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.204-209
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• 2016

In this paper, an unmanned delivery service using drone was proposed and verified the feasibility. The multicopter has GPS for autopilot and a camera for remote control by human operator. The gripper for manipulation of delivery object was designed and evaluated. The multicopter flies to a given position automatically based on GPS, and approaches to the prepared delivery desk by remote control of human operator using the received image from the multicopter. GPS sensor verification and experimental PID tuning were performed to ensure the flight stability. The flight tests were carried out to verify the feasibility of delivery service.

• Telecommunications review
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.468-480
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• 2014

The current-generation avionics systems are based on a federated architecture, where an electronic device runs a single software module or application that collaborates with other devices through a network. This architecture makes the internal system architecture very complicate, and gives rise to issues of Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP). In this paper, we show that the partitioning defined by ARINC 653 can efficiently deal with the SWaP issues on small unmanned aerial vehicles, where the SWaP issues are extremely severe. We especially install the integrated mission system on real hexacopter and quadcopter and perform successful flight tests. The presented software technology for integrated mission system and software consolidation methodology can provide a valuable reference for other SWaP sensitive real-time systems.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.54-60
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• 2018

In this paper, we propose an efficient automatic control method for the collision avoidance of drones. In general, the drones are controlled by transmitting to the flight control (FC) module the received PWM signals transmitted from a RC controller which transduce movements of the knob into PWM signal. We implemented the collision avoidance module in-between receiver and FC module to monitor and change the throttle, pitch and roll control signals to avoid drone collision. In order to avoid the collision, a LiDAR distance sensor and a servo-motor are installed and periodically measure the obstacle distance within -45 degrees from 45 degrees in flight direction. If the collision is predicted, the received PWM signal is changed and transmitted to the FC module to prevent the collision. We applied our proposed method to a hexacopter and the experimental results show that the safety is improved because it can prevent the collision caused by the inadvertency or inexperienced maneuver.