Development of a quad rotor tail-sitter VTOL UAV without control surfaces and experimental verification

Abstract

This paper presents development of a quad rotor tail-sitter VTOL UAV (Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) which is composed of four rotors and a fixed wing. The conventional VTOL UAVs have a drawback in the accuracy of the attitude control in stationary hovering because they were developed based on a fixed-wing aircraft and they used the control surfaces, such as aileron, elevator, and rudder for the attitude control. To overcome such a drawback, we developed a quad rotor tail-sitter VTOL UAV. The quad rotor tail-sitter VTOL UAV realizes high accuracy in the attitude control with four rotors like a quad rotor helicopter and achieves level flight like a fixed-wing airplane. The remarkable characteristic of the developed quad rotor tail-sitter VTOL UAV is that it does not use any control surfaces even in the level flight. This paper shows the design concept of the developed UAV and experimental verification of all flight modes including hovering, transition flight and level flight.