Quasi-Static Fault-Tolerant Feedback Control of a Quadrotor under Rotor Failure with Provable Safety Guarantees
Abstract
This paper presents a nonlinear control law for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) under single-rotor failure that guarantees set stabilization via quasi-static feedback (QSF). Given a geometric curve in three-dimensional space, we characterize and stabilize the zero-dynamics manifold, also known as the path-following manifold, which represents all feasible motions along the path. Stabilizing this manifold ensures path-invariance: a UAV with a failed rotor initialized on the path with an appropriate orientation remains on the path for all future time. Furthermore, local exponential convergence to the manifold is guaranteed under certain conditions, implying that, under the stated assumptions, rotor failure during flight does not cause transverse deviation from the path. The proposed controller thus provides theoretical safety guarantees, which are validated through numerical experiments in the Drake physics-based simulation engine. The code is publicly available at https://gradslab.github.io/quasistatic-ftc/.
Related
- Path Invariance of a Quadrotor System under Cyber Attacks with Theoretical Guarantees
- Provable Guarantees and Efficient Learning of Structural Equation Models with Latent Confounders
- Sparse Data Augmentation for Optimization with Provable Guarantees
- Adam at the Edge of Stability: Adaptive Feedback, Provable Oscillation, and Gradient Reversal
- Feasibility and Singularity in High-Order Safety-Critical Control for Quadrotor UAVs
BibTeX
@misc{lawati2026quasistatic,
title = {{Quasi-Static Fault-Tolerant Feedback Control of a Quadrotor under Rotor Failure with Provable Safety Guarantees}},
author = {Mohamed Al Lawati and Adeel Akhtar},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.23918},
eprint = {2609.23918},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23918},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Quasi-Static Fault-Tolerant Feedback Control of a Quadrotor under Rotor Failure with Provable Safety Guarantees
AU - Mohamed Al Lawati
AU - Adeel Akhtar
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.23918
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23918
AB - This paper presents a nonlinear control law for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) under single-rotor failure that guarantees set stabilization via quasi-static feedback (QSF). Given a geometric curve in three-dimensional space, we characterize and stabilize the zero-dynamics manifold, also known as the path-following manifold, which represents all feasible motions along the path. Stabilizing this manifold ensures path-invariance: a UAV with a failed rotor initialized on the path with an appropriate orientation remains on the path for all future time. Furthermore, local exponential convergence to the manifold is guaranteed under certain conditions, implying that, under the stated assumptions, rotor failure during flight does not cause transverse deviation from the path. The proposed controller thus provides theoretical safety guarantees, which are validated through numerical experiments in the Drake physics-based simulation engine. The code is publicly available at https://gradslab.github.io/quasistatic-ftc/.
ER -