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

Abstract

This paper provides a broad perspective and analysis of the work done in control of hybrid and convertible unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the main existing designs. These flying machines are capable of vertical take off and landing (VTOL) in helicopter mode and able to transition to high-speed forward flight in airplane mode and vice versa. This paper aims at helping engineers and researchers develop flight control systems for VTOL UAVs. To this end, a historical perspective first shows the technological advances in VTOL aircraft over the years. The main VTOL concepts and state-of-art flight control methods for VTOL UAVs are presented and discussed. This study shows both the common parts and the fundamental differences in the modeling, guidance, control, and control allocation for each hybrid-VTOL-UAV type. The open challenges and the current trends in the field are highlighted. These are namely: 1) augmenting or replacing classical controllers with data-driven methods such as neural networks and machine-learning-based controllers; 2) incorporating as much knowledge of the vehicle as possible into the flight controller, for example through model predictive control or model-based nonlinear controllers; 3) a trend 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, and 4) the need to mitigate control complexity and available computing resources.