Quad-plane is a popular type of electric vertical and takeoff/landing (eVTOL) vehicle that hybridizes a quadrotor and a fixed-wing airplane. However, the mechanical simplicity of a quad-plane also makes it vulnerable to rotor failures. When a complete rotor fails, it becomes physically impossible to stop the quad-plane from fast yaw spinning, which further induces considerable abnormal aerodynamic forces and moments on the wing. In this paper, a novel incremental adaptive sliding mode control (I-ASMC) is proposed to address these challenges. First, by exploiting sensor measurements, it simultaneously reduces the control model dependency and the minimum possible sliding mode control/observer gains. Second, finite-time convergence is guaranteed in the Lyapunov sense. Third, the control gains are automatically adapted to their minimum possible values without prior-knowledge on the uncertainty bounds. The proposed I-ASMC method is verified on a high fidelity simulation platform with computational fluid dynamic (CFD) aerodynamic models. Simulation results demonstrate that I-ASMC can drive a quad-plane with a complete loss of a single rotor to follow a trajectory. Its robustness to aerodynamic model uncertainties and rotor faults is also better than the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) and the incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) control. In conclusion, the reduced model dependency, implementation simplicity, and improved robustness make the proposed I-ASMC promising for enhancing quad-plane safety in real life.

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This study has developed a fault-tolerant controller that is able to recover a quadrotor from arbitrary initial orientations and angular velocities, despite the complete failure of a rotor. This cascaded control method includes a position/altitude controller, an almost-global convergence attitude controller, and a control allocation method based on quadratic programming. As a major novelty, a constraint of undesirable angular velocity is derived and fused into the control allocator, which significantly improves the recovery performance. For validation, we have conducted a set of Monte-Carlo simulation to test the reliability of the proposed method of recovering the quadrotor from arbitrary initial attitude/rate conditions. In addition, real-life flight tests have been performed. The results demonstrate that the post-failure quadrotor can recover after being casually tossed into the air.

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In order to further expand the flight envelope of quadrotors under actuator failures, we design a nonlinear sensor-based fault-tolerant controller to stabilize a quadrotor with failure of two opposing rotors in the high-speed flight condition (>8 m/s). The incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion approach which excels in handling model uncertainties is adopted to compensate for the significant unknown aerodynamic effects. The internal dynamics of such an underactuated system have been analyzed, and subsequently stabilized by redefining the control output. The proposed method can be generalized to control a quadrotor under single-rotor-failure and nominal conditions. For validation, flight tests have been carried out in a large-scale open jet wind tunnel. The position of a damaged quadrotor can be controlled in the presence of significant wind disturbances. A linear quadratic regulator approach from the literature has been compared to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed nonlinear method in the windy and high-speed flight condition.@en

In order to achieve high-speed flight of a damaged quadrotor with complete loss of a single rotor, a multiloop hybrid nonlinear controller is designed. By fully making use of sensor measurements, the model dependence of this control method is reduced, which is conducive to handling disturbance from the unknown aerodynamic effects. This controller is tested on a quadrotor vehicle with one rotor completely removed in the high-speed condition. Free flights are performed in the Open Jet Facility, a large-scale wind tunnel. Over 9 m/s flight speed is reached for the damaged quadrotor in these tests. In addition, several high-speed spin-induced aerodynamic effects are discovered and analyzed.@en