Abstract
In this paper, we present the development of a quad-rotor tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is composed of quad rotors and a fixed wing. The developed UAV can hover like a quad-rotor helicopter and can fly long distance like a fixed-wing airplane. The main wing of the developed UAV is taken from a commercially available radio-controlled airplane and other parts such as the body frame are newly developed. A microcomputer, various sensors and a battery are mounted on the UAV for autonomous flight without any support from a ground system. Attitude and altitude control systems are developed for the UAV. In order to verify the designed controller, a three-dimensional flight simulator of a quad-rotor tail-sitter UAV is developed by use of MATLAB/Simulink. This paper also describes attitude control experiments. The results show that the propeller slipstream has a negative influence on attitude control. Solutions for the negative influence of the propeller slipstream are also discussed in this paper.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 307-326 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | Advanced Robotics |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 3-4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2012 |
Keywords
- Unmanned aerial vehicle
- micro aerial vehicle
- quad-rotor helicopter
- tail-sitter
- vertical takeoff and landing
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Software
- Control and Systems Engineering
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Hardware and Architecture
- Computer Science Applications