Antonio Franchi

TL;DR: It is proved that the dynamical model of a quadrotor subject to linear rotor drag effects is differentially flat in its position and heading, and a method based on a gradient-free optimization to identify the rotor drag coefficients, which are required to compute the feedforward control terms.

TL;DR: This paper considers a different hexarotor architecture where propellers are tilted, without the need of any additional hardware, which gains a 6-DoF actuation and discusses the controllability and the tilt angle optimization to reduce the control effort for the specific task.

Abstract: Robustness and flexibility constitute the main advantages of multiple-robot systems with respect to single-robot ones as per the recent literature. The use of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) combines these benefits with the agility and pervasiveness of aerial platforms [1], [2]. The degree of autonomy of the multi-UAV system should be tuned according to the specificities of the situation under consideration. For regular missions, fully autonomous UAV systems are often appropriate, but, in general, the use of semiautonomous groups of UAVs, supervised or partially controlled by one or more human operators, is the only viable solution to deal with the complexity and unpredictability of real-world scenarios as in, e.g., the case of search and rescue missions or exploration of large/cluttered environments [3]. In addition, the human presence is also mandatory for taking the responsibility of critical decisions in high-risk situations [4].

TL;DR: A rigorous analysis of the system stability and steady-state characteristics and validate performance through human/hardware-in-the-loop simulations by considering a heterogeneous fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles as a case study and provides an experimental validation with four quadrotor UAVs.

TL;DR: This paper considers both the design of open-loop trajectories with optimal properties and of distributed control laws converging to optimal trajectories, and develops a constant factor approximation algorithm for the minimum refresh time trajectory for a cyclic graph.