Jiaze Cai, Hunter Denton, Moble Benedict, Hao Kang
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper describes the development and flight testing of a tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform that has the potential to be tube-launched. Integrated with vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capability, the platform can perform high-endurance loiter tasks along with low-speed and hovering flights, and land vertically in limited spaces. The current design utilizes a thrust-vectored counter-rotating coaxial propeller combined with a foldable conventional fixed-wing to accomplish both vertical and horizontal flights. A feedback control strategy capable of stabilizing and controlling the vehicle in both vertical and horizontal flight was designed and implemented on a custom-designed 1.7-gram autopilot. Several tests were conducted in hover and edgewise flight with aggressive pilot inputs to demonstrate the controllability of the aircraft even in the presence of moderate wind gusts. Additionally, transition flight tests were also performed, which demonstrated the vehicle’s capability of transitioning from vertical to fixed-wing horizontal flight using thrust-vectoring-based pitch control.
期刊介绍:
The role of the International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles is to provide the scientific and engineering community with a peer-reviewed open access journal dedicated to publishing high-quality technical articles summarizing both fundamental and applied research in the area of micro air vehicles.