Development of a hybrid vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicle for maritime application

Abstract

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is able to take-off and land on a medium sized ship, have greater endurance and range as compared to the previous iteration, and the ability to achieve all three flight modes - vertical, transition and horizontal flight modes is to be designed, built and tested. In this paper a comprehensive review is given on various VTOL planform configuration and a tilt-rotor configuration is selected for Minerva 2.0 for its high stability and increased efficiency. This paper covers the selection analysis of different vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) airframe as well as mechanical and electronic hardware design with the intention of increasing flight efficiency for surveillance purposes on wide sea area. This paper presents Minerva 2.0, a novel aerial platform with VTOL capabilities. Numerical and analytical analysis results are discussed. The previous iteration, Minerva 1.0 was built and tested as a QuadPlane configuration and an increased efficiency of 25 to 58.7% is achieved in this paper.