First flight tests for a quadrotor UAV with tilting propellers

Abstract

In this work we present a novel concept of a quadrotor UAV with tilting propellers. Standard quadrotors are limited in their mobility because of their intrinsic underactuation (only 4 independent control inputs vs. their 6-dof pose in space). The quadrotor prototype discussed in this paper, on the other hand, has the ability to also control the orientation of its 4 propellers, thus making it possible to overcome the aforementioned underactuation and behave as a fully-actuated flying vehicle. We first illustrate the hardware/software specifications of our recently developed prototype, and then report the experimental results of some preliminary, but promising, flight tests which show the capabilities of this new UAV concept.