Work

QuadRocket: An Aerial Robotic Testbed for Adaptive Thrust-Vector Control of Rocket-Like Vehicles

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This paper presents QuadRocket, a quadrotor-based rocket prototype that provides a low-cost, low-risk platform for validating advanced thrust-vector control strategies for launch vehicle-type systems. The prototype consists of a cylindrical main body mounted on top of a quadrotor through a universal joint, forming a flying inverted pendulum with non-negligible inertia. For control design, the coupled system is modeled as a single axisymmetric rigid body actuated by a vectored force applied along its longitudinal axis. A reduced-attitude representation on the two sphere is adopted to explicitly exploit the vehicle's axial symmetry and to decouple yaw from the thrust-vector direction. On this model, we derive an adaptive backstepping controller that achieves almost global trajectory tracking in the presence of unknown constant disturbances, while a control-point transformation mitigates non minimum-phase behavior. The quadrotor is then treated as a thrust vector actuator, and a dynamic-surface-based attitude controller is designed to track the desired thrust-vector, accounting for actuation dynamics and avoiding explicit differentiation of virtual control signals. The complete architecture is evaluated in simulation and validated experimentally in an indoor motion-capture arena. Results demonstrate accurate trajectory tracking, effective disturbance compensation, and confirm the suitability of the QuadRocket as a versatile testbed for thrust-vector-controlled robotic vehicles.

Source: IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems

DOI: 10.1109/taes.2026.3706328

Authors: Pedro Santos, Joel Reis, Paulo Oliveira, Carlos Silvestre

Institutions: University of Lisbon, University of Macau

Language: English

Topic: Adaptive Control of Nonlinear Systems

Subfield: Control and Systems Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, Universidade de Macau, Fundo para o Desenvolvimento das Ciências e da Tecnologia, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia