Quadrotor Drone Stability Under Single Engine Failure
This paper aims to create a quadrotor controller that can operate with only 3 fully functioning rotors. Testing and simulations were conducted in MATLAB, with modifications added to a Proportional/Integral/Derivative Controller in Simulink for the Parrot Mambo drone. The base controller was modified so that it could switch between regular control and 3-engine control. These modifications were also expanded to account for a prop with reduced maximum output in addition to the no-output model. Simulation showed that such a controller was successful in taking off and maintaining a hover both when the prop failure existed for the entire flight and when it was induced mid flight. Test runs on the real drone showed that it could maintain altitude for some reduced engine output, but it was ineffective at salvaging flight under total or near-total prop failure.