Review of designs and flight control techniques of hybrid and convertible VTOL UAVs

Ducard, Guillaume; Allenspach, Mike

doi:10.1016/j.ast.2021.107035

Cited by 121 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 189 publications

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“…The literature also includes other survey papers on the design and flight control techniques for hybrid and convertible VTOL UAVs [12], [15], [18]. From these and from a further extensive search that we performed on the main bases (IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar), we selected the works that are most related to ours, which we summarize in Tables 1 and 2.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Double Hybrid Tailsitter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle With Vertical Takeoff and Landing

2022

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We propose a new concept and architectural design for a double hybrid tailsitter unmanned aerial vehicle with vertical takeoff and landing capability. Basically, it consists of a modified flying wing with a single combustion powertrain set and a multirotor with 2 powertrain sets with electric motors. To this end, we have designed, built, and tested a prototype that spends less energy on vertical taking off and landing and also on horizontal flight, for maximizing flight endurance and distance. With electric propellers fixed at the leading wing edge, the tailsitter has two standard surfaces for elevation control and two vertical stabilizers that are used to give the necessary direction on vertical takeoff and landing. Experiments and results show the versatility of our hybrid tailsitter for operations in a restricted field. We performed several tests starting with the aircraft on the ground in vertical positioning. These tests include executing vertical takeoffs and landing, transitions from vertical to horizontal flight modes and transitions back from horizontal to vertical flight modes, and hovering, which were carried out successfully. Transition fourth and back from combustion to multirotor modes are inherent to some of those flight mode transitions, which have been performed smoothly. We also performed tests (in bench) to estimate the flight endurance. Final autonomous flight adjustments were not performed due to the Covid-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. To this end the proposed and currently built prototype has proven to be functional as an effective hybrid UAV system.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Double Hybrid Tailsitter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle With Vertical Takeoff and Landing

2022

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“…These platforms have seen an increase in their actuation abilities from the first presented designs [1] demonstrating the ability to achieve static hovering, to modern platforms able to apply independent forces and moments [2] in all directions, or achieve omnidirectinal flight [3,4]. This increase in abilities allowed new applications to emerge that were previously not possible with fixed wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)s [5], most notably, Aerial Physical Interaction [6,7] and Human Robot Interaction [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Static Hovering Realization for Multirotor Aerial Vehicles with Tiltable Propellers

Hamandi¹,

Seneviratne²,

Zweiri³

2022

Preprint

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This paper presents a theoretical study on the ability of multi-rotor aerial vehicles (MRAVs) with tiltable propellers to achieve and sustain static hovering at different orientations. To analyze the ability of MRAVs with tiltable propellers to achieve static hovering, a novel linear map between the platform's control inputs and applied forces and moments is introduced. The relation between the introduced map and the platform's ability to hover at different orientations is developed. Correspondingly, the conditions for MRAVs with tiltable propellers to realize and sustain static hovering are detailed. A numerical metric is then introduced, which reflects the ability of MRAVs to sustain static hovering at different orientations. A subclass of MRAVs with tiltable propellers is defined as the Critically Statically Hoverable platforms (CSH), where CSH platforms are MRAVs that cannot sustain static hovering with fixed propellers, but can achieve static hovering with tilting propellers. Finally, extensive simulations are conducted to test and validate the above findings, and to demonstrate the effect of the proposed numerical metric on the platform's dynamics.

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“…Furthermore, eVTOL aircraft need a wide range of operating modes (hover, forward flight, transitionincluding post-stall operation, cruise, climb, descent, etc.). One of the trends in EVTOL development is towards finding a unified-control approach valid in all flight modes without the need to switch among flight controllers or to perform predefined-gain scheduling, in order to address the challenge of a need to mitigate control complexity and available computing resources [3], [4]. A pre-requisite for eVTOL "air-taxis" business model is to have an aircraft that is relatively "easy" to fly requiring minimal pilot training compared to that of commercial and military aircraft hence one aim of this work is to get a controller structure/architecture which is general for piloted, semi-automatic and automated flight.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Control of an eVTOL using Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion

Enenakpogbe

Whidborne

2022

2022 UKACC 13th International Conference on Control (CONTROL)

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This paper presents a non-linear dynamic inversion based flight controller using virtual controls, generalised forces and moments for the longitudinal motion control of a VTOL aircraft including transition manoeuvres. The control architecture is general for piloted, semi-automatic and fully-automated flight. It consists of a main inner-loop NDI controller that is used for forward cruise flight and an outer linear controller used for low speed and hover. Forward and backward transition manoeuvres are executed by switching between the NDI-based controller and position control loops. Simulation results show the control potential for both hover and cruise as well as over the vital transition flight phase.

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Review of designs and flight control techniques of hybrid and convertible VTOL UAVs

Cited by 121 publications

References 189 publications

Double Hybrid Tailsitter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle With Vertical Takeoff and Landing

Double Hybrid Tailsitter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle With Vertical Takeoff and Landing

Static Hovering Realization for Multirotor Aerial Vehicles with Tiltable Propellers

Control of an eVTOL using Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion

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