Nonlinear physical modelization, control law design and fault detection analysis of a tricopter drone

Although the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) had been used since the early 20th Century, their development has had a considerable growth during these first two decades of the 21st Century. Among the most popular UAVs, we may find the multicopters, due to the fact they involve a considerable amount of advantages, such as their small size and manoeuvrability. However, we should keep in mind that their autonomy is generally quite small because they need a relevant quantity of energy to fly. In order to mitigate the influence of that drawback, the IMS (Intégration du Matériau au Système) laboratory that is associated with the Université de Bordeaux (France) is trying to implement convertible engines to this kind of aircraft. The idea would be to change the orientation of rotors to use the advantages of both the fixed-wing aircraft (easier cruise flights) and rotor based aircraft (vertical take-offs and landings), to maximize the benefits of both modes. The aim of that project is to implement that idea on a tricopter drone, that is to say, on a UAV that has three rotors. Two out of three rotors would remain fixed with respect to the body of it, and the third one would be movable around the roll axis. This document is about the internship that has been done at that laboratory, helping to develop that project. This work involves three parts; the first one of them is the nonlinear physical modelization of the aircraft that is designed in order to have some reference that describes the way it flies. Afterwards, different control laws are used in order to make a safe implementation of the previous system at a later stage. Finally, algorithms that detect the faults that may come up throughout its flights are created. That work has been made at a simulation level, that is to say, it involves the computational tasks in order to be implemented on the actual tricopter later on, using the Matlab program and its Simulink application, as they constitute really handy tools to make this kind of analysis