Swiss scientists have taught the quadrocopter to stay on the fly after the loss of the rotor

The Institute of Dynamic Systems and Control in Zurich, whose specialists demonstrated quadrocopters juggling a reverse pendulum earlier this year , continue to amaze. They managed to develop an algorithm that allows the device to remain in the air and land safely after the loss of one of the propellers. The video shows the flight of the quadrotor, in which one of the screws was not fixed, and after a few seconds of the flight flew off the axis due to vibrations. This did not stop him from quickly regaining control and making a relatively soft landing:



An ordinary quadrotor becomes almost uncontrollable if one of its engines fails or the rotor breaks. That is why apparatus with six, eight or more rotors is so often used. For greater fault tolerance you have to pay extra weight design. The new algorithm will allow you to abandon circuits with an excessive number of rotors, even in very critical applications. The author of the development, Mark Muller, claims that the algorithm is able to control the flight even if more screws are lost - if the traction of the remaining rotors is not enough to continue the flight, it remains possible to at least reduce the speed of a collision with the ground and choose a relatively safe landing area, instead of falling anywhere - into water or onto people's heads.

Failsafe quadrocopter differs from the usual only in the software part - all the hardware can be standard. In addition to increasing the reliability of conventional devices, the new control principle can be used to create new stable circuits with less than four rotors. An article describing the algorithm is now at the reviewing stage and will be published next year.

Source: RoboHub .