Structural reconfigurability analysis of multirotor UAVs after actuator failures

The paper presents a reconfigurability analysis of multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with four and six rotors. A method for structural reconfigurability analysis is introduced, which is then applied to a structural model of the multirotors. The failures lead either to a blockage or to the complete loss of a rotor. The analysis shows that, independent of the systems' parameters, a quadrotor is not able to hover with a failed actuator, while the reconfigurability of hexrotors strongly depends on the configuration of the clockwise and counter clockwise rotating rotors. The results concerning the reconfiguration of a rotor loss in a hexrotor system are evaluated in simulations, where the reconfiguration is performed by using the virtual actuator technique.