Teknomekanik
Vol. 9 No. 2 (2026): Regular Issue

Design, control, and development of a low-cost single-tilt-rotor Tricopter

Fahmizal Fahmizal (Department of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Vocational College, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia)
Ahmad Jaelani Sidik (Department of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Vocational College, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia)
Priyova Muhammad Rafief (Department of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Vocational College, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia)
Hari Maghfiroh (Department of Electrical Engineering, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia)
Mariusz Jabłoński (Department of Electrical Engineering, Lodz University of Technology, Poland)
Piotr Borkowski (Department of Electrical Engineering, Lodz University of Technology, Poland)



Article Info

Publish Date
15 Jun 2026

Abstract

This paper presents the design, implementation, and experimental validation of a low-cost PID-based attitude control system for a single-tilt-rotor tricopter. The proposed platform employs a Y-shaped frame configuration with a servo-driven tail-tilt mechanism and is implemented using a low-cost ATmega328P microcontroller and GY-88A IMU sensor. A PID controller was used for inner-loop attitude stabilization of roll, pitch, and yaw motions due to its low computational complexity and suitability for resource-constrained embedded systems. The PID gains were obtained through manual tuning using a tricopter test-bed rig under disturbance-free conditions and experimentally evaluated under both static and dynamic wind disturbances. Under a static wind disturbance of 7.2 m/s, the roll and pitch mean absolute error (MAE) values reached 0.977° and 4.826°, respectively, while dynamic disturbance testing produced MAE values of 0.823° for roll and 2.094° for pitch. Outdoor flight tests resulted in MAE values of 1.133° for roll and 1.831° for pitch. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed low-cost tricopter platform can maintain stable attitude control under the evaluated disturbance conditions and outdoor flight scenarios. The study highlights the feasibility of implementing reliable tricopter stabilization using computationally lightweight PID control on inexpensive embedded hardware.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

teknomekanik

Publisher

Subject

Mechanical Engineering

Description

Teknomekanik is an international journal that publishes peer-reviewed research in engineering fields (miscellaneous) to the world community. Paper written collaboratively by researchers from various countries is encouraged. It aims to promote academic exchange and increase collaboration among ...