Analyzing the propeller aerodynamic performance is of vital importance for research and improvement of unmanned aerial vehicles. This paper presents the design requirements for a propeller for rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicles and an analysis of a model for calculating propeller aerodynamic performance. Based on blade element momentum theory, the aerodynamic force of a blade element is analyzed and used. The symmetric airfoil NACA 0012 is used as an example to verify the validity of the model. An experimental system for propeller aerodynamic performance is designed and built to test the aerodynamic performance of six types of the propeller from a single manufacturer (APC). Data-processing software is also developed to draw curves and perform single-step calculations of three propellers’ parameters: airfoil resistance power, induced velocity, and efficiency. The results of the experiment indicate that both the thrust and torque of the propeller increase with rotational speed, propeller diameter, and propeller pitch. The research is of great significance to select more suitable propellers for unmanned aerial vehicles and the further improvement of the performance of unmanned aerial vehicles’ dynamical system.

The multi-rotor micro-UAV has become an important platform for assessing crop information promptly given its high flexibility, compact size, low cost, and high spatial resolution. However, considering the limits of the stability of the micro-UAV control system and the precision of automatic navigation systems, how to timely adjust the position and attitude of UAVs to ensure the target within the scope of monitoring is one of the key techniques which determines whether micro-UAVs can be widely used in precision agriculture as a remote sensing platform. In this study, the integrated navigation system of INS/GPS (Inertial Navigation System/Global Positioning System) and EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) was adopted as the navigation system and fusion algorithm for simulation analysis respectively, to monitor the position and attitude of UAVs more accurately and thus improve the estimation accuracy and control precision. An autonomous flight experiment was designed and carried out, and experimental data collected by commercially available UAVs. LabVIEW was used to analyze and process all experimental data and outputted flight state graphs, which reflected the optimization effect of EKF algorithm and control precision visually.