Tilt as a Certified Resource: Preserving Motor Wrench-Rate Authority on Articulated Multirotors
cs.RO, cs.SY, eess.SY, math.OC
Submitted: 2026-09-18
Updated: 2026-09-18
Comments: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: Fully-actuated multirotor aerial vehicles must not only track nominal wrenches but retain the "readiness" to modulate them rapidly under disturbances.
Terminology
Abstract
Fully-actuated multirotor aerial vehicles must not only track nominal wrenches but retain the "readiness" to modulate them rapidly under disturbances. Classical effort-minimizing allocators ignore this dynamic limit, whereas maximizing readiness leads to topologically disconnected optimal sheets demanding physically impossible actuator rates. Enforcing a readiness safety floor on fixed-geometry symmetric platforms further encounters a zero-sum degeneracy: motor-speed redistribution cannot improve authority without conceding wrench tracking. This paper uses active morphology to break the degeneracy, treating servo tilt as a geometric resource supplying authority-recovery directions unavailable to static rotors. We construct a configuration-dependent, motor-only readiness certificate - the log-volume of the reachable wrench-rate set - that explicitly excludes servo capacity, preventing a "ghost capacity fallacy" in which the certificate would falsely credit slow mechanical kinematic limits instead of collapsing accurately at motor saturation. The certificate is enforced as a Control Barrier Function (CBF) within a Unified Physical-Command Quadratic Program acting on motor torques and servo setpoints. Closed-loop simulations of an articulated octorotor under severe gust disturbances show classical allocators diverging and uncertified articulated allocators violating the safety floor, while the proposed CBF filter bounds the system state and preserves vehicle authority.
Sources
- Drag-Aware Aerodynamic Manipulability for Torque-Limited Redundant Multirotors: Aerodynamic Promptness based on the Symmetric Acceleration Capacity
- Task-Space Singularity Avoidance for Control Affine Systems Using Control Barrier Functions
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