Sensitivity of Control Systems of Quadcopters

Abstract

This paper presents a method for analyzing the parameter sensitivity of multivariable control systems in multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) subject to partial efficiency degradation of their DC motors. Quadcopter dynamics with identical channel controllers are formulated within the framework of uniform multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. Using canonical representations and the method of characteristic transfer functions (CTFs), the sensitivity of the closed-loop system is reduced to calculating the first-order perturbations of the eigenvalues and canonical basis eigenvectors of the crossconnection matrix. A numerical simulation of a quadcopter control system with uncompensated kinematic cross-connections demonstrates the analytical evaluation of system sensitivity under small motor efficiency degradations.