A Fully-Actuated Drone with Rotating Seesaws

Abstract

Standard drones are generally underactuated systems, an attribute that limits their maneuvering ability. This limitation is because of the inherent coupling between the total thrust direction and the angular state of the drone body. To decouple these quantities, we suggest using seesaws, which allow controlling the thrust direction independently. Unlike other structures based on additional actuators to tilt the thrust, our solution is not based on any extra actuator that does not contribute to the lifting force. The presented configuration is an octocopter with eight propellers and four seesaws. These results extend a former suggested structure based on a single seesaw.