Design and simulation of a quad rotor tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicle

Abstract

In this paper, we present the design and concept of a quad rotor tail-sitter UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). The designed UAV is composed of quad rotors and a fixed wing. It can hover like a helicopter, and can cruise like a fixed wing airplane. In order to verify this concept, a simulator of a quad rotor tail-sitter UAV is developed. Simulation results show the advantage in energy efficiency of the proposed UAV over a conventional quad rotor helicopter type UAV. This paper also describes the development of the quad rotor tail-sitter UAV.