Fully Actuated Tricopter with Pilot-Supporting Control∗

Abstract A tricopter with three tilting motor-supporting arms in a planar 2n/3-distributed configuration is investigated. A single rigid body approximate model thereof is shown to be fully actuated, thus allowing for a variety of flight maneuvers including translation without tilting and inclined hovering. A pilot-supporting control strategy is presented consisting of two parts: a nonlinear attitude tracking controller based on a rotation matrix attitude parametrization; and a heading-referenced acceleration command generator. Together these allow the pilot to intuitively command vehicle motions for a chosen tilted body configuration. The construction of the vehicle is discussed and experimental flight results show good attitude controller performance.