Spring-Damped Underactuated Swashplateless Rotor on a Bicopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Abstract

The stabilisation capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with bicopter underactuated swashplateless rotors are highly sensitive to motor-induced vibration. Due to the requirement of the active control of underactuated swashplateless rotors, conventional designs are limited in reducing vibration through control optimisation. A solution with customized passive spring-damping structures on a unique underactuated swashplateless rotor of a tiltrotor bicopter platform is presented. The implementation of this structure effectively reduces the self-coherent vibration in flights. As a result, a higher level of control authority has been achieved without setting excessive low-pass filtering for vibration. Experimentally obtained inertial measurement unit (IMU) data, rotor speed, rotor tilt angle, and the cyclic stator response are presented for comparison with Simulink model predictions.