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Optimal transition from hovering to level-flight of a quadrotor tail-sitter UAV

Published: 01 June 2017 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    A quadrotor equipped with a fixed-wing (hereinafter referred to as the quadrotor tail-sitter UAV) has been developed by authors. The quadrotor tail-sitter UAV can hover like a quadrotor and can fly like a fixed-wing airplane. The remarkable characteristic of the developed quadrotor tail-sitter UAV is that it does not use any control surfaces during any form of flight; hovering, transition flight or level flight. This paper discusses an optimal transition from hovering to level flight for the quadrotor tail-sitter UAV because transition flight is most likely to be unstable throughout flight owing to stalling of the fixed-wing. The paper proposes three transition strategies: (i) normal transition (PID feedback to a step input), (ii) minimizing the transition time, and (iii) minimizing the transition time with keeping altitude constant. To realize the above optimal transition strategies, the aerodynamic parameters of the developed quadrotor tail-sitter UAV are measured by the wind tunnel test in advance. The three strategies are experimentally verified and the comparison among the three strategies is presented.

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    Cited By

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    • (2022)Control Effectiveness Enhancement for the Hovering/Cruising Transition Control of a Ducted Fan UAVJournal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems10.1007/s10846-022-01689-y105:4Online publication date: 6-Aug-2022
    • (2020)Seamless 90-Degree Attitude Transition Flight of a Quad Tilt-rotor UAV under Full Position Control2020 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM)10.1109/AIM43001.2020.9158965(839-844)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2020
    • (2019)Robust Tracking Control of a Quadrotor UAV Based on Adaptive Sliding Mode ControllerComplexity10.1155/2019/79316322019Online publication date: 14-Dec-2019
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        Published In

        cover image Autonomous Robots
        Autonomous Robots  Volume 41, Issue 5
        June 2017
        225 pages

        Publisher

        Kluwer Academic Publishers

        United States

        Publication History

        Published: 01 June 2017

        Author Tags

        1. Control system
        2. Flight control
        3. Optimization
        4. Quadrotor
        5. Tail-sitter aircraft
        6. Unmanned aerial vehicle

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        • (2022)Control Effectiveness Enhancement for the Hovering/Cruising Transition Control of a Ducted Fan UAVJournal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems10.1007/s10846-022-01689-y105:4Online publication date: 6-Aug-2022
        • (2020)Seamless 90-Degree Attitude Transition Flight of a Quad Tilt-rotor UAV under Full Position Control2020 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM)10.1109/AIM43001.2020.9158965(839-844)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2020
        • (2019)Robust Tracking Control of a Quadrotor UAV Based on Adaptive Sliding Mode ControllerComplexity10.1155/2019/79316322019Online publication date: 14-Dec-2019
        • (2019)Learning motion primitives for planning swift maneuvers of quadrotorAutonomous Robots10.1007/s10514-019-09831-w43:7(1733-1745)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2019
        • (2018)Nonlinear Control of Autonomous Flying Cars with Wings and Distributed Electric Propulsion2018 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)10.1109/CDC.2018.8619578(5326-5333)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2018

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