Configuration-Induced Passive Self-Rotation for Perception-Enhanced Autonomous Flight

2026-07-20

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of efficient autonomous flight for drones in confined, cluttered environments, where limited onboard sensor field-of-view hinders situational awareness. To overcome this, the authors propose a tricopter with a reconfigurable rear arm that leverages a configuration-induced passive autorotation mechanism to actively expand perceptual coverage. By innovatively tuning the configuration parameters to modulate the passive autorotation operating point, the system co-optimizes perception refresh rate and flight performance at the vehicle level. A hierarchical autonomy framework is developed, integrating waypoint replanning, high-dynamic trajectory tracking, and disturbance-rejection control to enable agile and robust flight during continuous autorotation. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly enhances high-speed tracking, disturbance rejection, and perception-augmented autonomous navigation in complex environments.

Abstract

Autonomous flight in confined and cluttered environments is fundamentally limited by the restricted field of view (FoV) of onboard sensors. Passive self-rotation expands sensing coverage without additional sensors but introduces a tradeoff between swept-FoV refresh rate and flight performance. This letter presents a configuration-induced passively self-rotating tricopter for perception-enhanced autonomous flight. Firstly, the rear-arm configuration parameter is exploited to regulate the passive self-rotation operating point, providing an airframe-level mechanism for balancing swept-FoV refresh rate and flight performance. Secondly, a hierarchical autonomy framework integrating planning and control is developed to enable agile and robust autonomous flight under continuous passive self-rotation. For waypoint-based inspection, guide-point replanning is further used to improve task-level coverage. Extensive real-world experiments, including high-speed trajectory tracking, disturbance-rejection tests, and autonomous navigation in representative cluttered environments, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for perception-enhanced autonomous flight.

Problem

• field of view
• autonomous flight
• confined environments
• cluttered environments
• sensing coverage

Innovation

• passive self-rotation
• configuration-induced
• perception-enhanced flight
• hierarchical autonomy
• swept field of view