Robust Self-Reconfiguration for Fault-Tolerant Control of Modular Aerial Robot Systems

Modular Aerial Robotic Systems (MARS) consist of multiple drone units assembled into a single, integrated rigid flying platform. With inherent redundancy, MARS can self-reconfigure into different configurations to mitigate rotor or unit failures and maintain stable flight. However, existing works on MARS self-reconfiguration often overlook the practical controllability of intermediate structures formed during the reassembly process, which limits their applicability. In this paper, we address this gap by considering the control-constrained dynamic model of MARS and proposing a robust and efficient self-reconstruction algorithm that maximizes the controllability margin at each intermediate stage. Specifically, we develop algorithms to compute optimal, controllable disassembly and assembly sequences, enabling robust self-reconfiguration. Finally, we validate our method in several challenging fault-tolerant self-reconfiguration scenarios, demonstrating significant improvements in both controllability and trajectory tracking while reducing the number of assembly steps. The videos and source code of this work are available atthis https URL

@article{huang2025_2503.09376,
  title={ Robust Self-Reconfiguration for Fault-Tolerant Control of Modular Aerial Robot Systems },
  author={ Rui Huang and Siyu Tang and Zhiqian Cai and Lin Zhao },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.09376},
  year={ 2025 }
}