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a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: This paper presents aerodynamic and mechanical design, prototyping and ight control system design of
Received 26 November 2010 a new unmanned aerial vehicle SUAVI (Sabanci University Unmanned Aerial VehIcle). SUAVI is an electric
Accepted 12 March 2012 powered quad tilt-wing UAV that is capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) like a helicopter and
Available online 9 May 2012
long duration horizontal ight like an airplane. Aerodynamic and mechanical designs are optimized to
enhance the operational performance of the aerial vehicle. Both of them have great importance for
Keywords: increasing efciency, reaching the ight duration goals and achieving the desired tasks. A full dynamical
UAV
model is derived by utilizing NewtonEuler formulation for the development of the ight control system.
Quad tilt-wing
Aerodynamic design
The prototype is constructed from carbon composite material. A hierarchical control system is designed
Carbon composite where a high level controller (supervisor) is responsible for task decision, monitoring states of the vehicle,
Hierarchical control system generating references for low level controllers, etc. and several low level controllers are responsible for
attitude and altitude stabilization. Results of several simulations and real ight tests are provided along
with ight data to show performance of the developed UAV.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction do not require any infrastructure for takeoff and landing. They also
do not need any forward airspeed for ight and maneuvering, which
Multi-purpose, compact unmanned aerial vehicles have been makes them useful particularly in urban areas and indoors. This
gaining remarkable capabilities in the last decades. They are leads to a large variety of rotary wing UAVs ranging from Boeing
important due to their abilities to replace manned aircrafts in A160 Hummingbird with 2948 kg ight weight to SeikoEpson l
many routine and dangerous missions, and to reduce costs of many Flying Robot with only 12.3 g ight weight. But they are mechani-
aerial operations [1,2]. These aerial robots can be utilized in a vari- cally complex and have low ight speeds and durations.
ety of civilian missions such as surveillance in disasters, trafc Hybrid design UAVs join the vertical ight capabilities of rotary
monitoring, law enforcement and power line maintenance [37]. wing UAVs with the high speed long duration ight capabilities of
They are already being benetted in military applications such as xed wing UAVs. Despite their increased mechanical complexity
intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, reconnaissance and and more difcult control, they are very desirable for their ability
aerial attacks [3,812]. These application areas lead to more ad- to act like both xed wing and rotary wing UAVs, since this ability
vanced research for increasing the level of autonomy and reducing is very useful in various missions. Among these hybrid designs,
the size of UAVs. UAVs can be classied into three main categories: tilt-rotor UAVs constitute an attractive research area due to their
xed-wing UAVs, rotary-wing UAVs, and hybrid design UAVs. stability, energy efciency and controllability [13,14]. A large
Fixed wing UAVs constitute the richest group among these cate- proportion of the research on these vehicles are on dual tilt-rotors
gories both in terms of research and utilization. They are able to y such as Bell Eagle Eye, Smart UAV of KARI and BIROTAN [15] and
for long duration at high speeds and their design is simple in com- dual tilt-wings such as HARVee [16] and the UAV of Universita di
parison with the other types of UAVs. These advantages lead to a Bologna. The dual rotor UAVs generally require cyclic control on
broad range of xed wing UAV designs from RQ-4 Global Hawk with propellers, which adds to the mechanical complexity, for stabiliza-
39.8 m wingspan to AeroVironment Wasp with 72 cm wingspan. tion and maneuvering. To solve this problem there are also studies
However, these UAVs suffer from the requirement of runways or on quad tilt-wing UAVs such as QUX-02 of Japan Aerospace Explo-
additional launch and recovery equipment for takeoff and landing. ration Agency and QTW of Chiba University and G.H. Craft [17,18].
Rotary wing UAVs, on the other hand, are advantageous since they In this work, a novel electric powered quad tilt-wing UAV
(SUAVI: Sabanci University Unmanned Aerial VehIcle) is presented.
It has four rotors that are mounted on the four wings. The wings,
Corresponding author.
together with the rotors, are tilted between vertical and horizontal
E-mail addresses: cetinsoy@sabanciuniv.edu (E. Cetinsoy), serhatdikyar@saban
ciuniv.edu (S. Dikyar), chancer@sabanciuniv.edu (C. Hancer), kaanoner@sabanciu
congurations to accomplish vertical and horizontal ights. It is
niv.edu (K.T. Oner), efesirimoglu@sabanciuniv.edu (E. Sirimoglu), munel@sabanciu similar to a quadrotor helicopter in vertical and a tandem wing air-
niv.edu (M. Unel), aksit@sabanciuniv.edu (M.F. Aksit). plane in horizontal ight modes. Electric motors for propulsion are
0957-4158/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2012.03.003
724 E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745
placed on the leading edges of each wing: the motors lift SUAVI tal ight, whereas SUAVI is optimized for horizontal ight at lower
when the wings are vertical and they provide forward thrust for speeds (up to 60 km/h) and also for indoor ights. Additionally, for
horizontal motion when the wings are tilted. SUAVI can track a research on such aircrafts, SUAVI offers a low cost platform when
route autonomously utilizing GPS data and can be controlled man- compared with the QTW and it can be easily transported to the test
ually when needed. It has an onboard surveillance camera to trans- eld with its easily detachable wings, whereas QTW is a large air-
mit images to the ground station. craft with wings that are built in one piece. Furthermore, SUAVI is
To achieve long duration ight in various missions, optimum designed as a quad tilt-wing aircraft with clock-wise and counter
selection of wing proles and the body shape is required. The wing clock-wise propellers for the balancing of yaw moments of the
prole is chosen according to the lift-drag requirements of SUAVI rotating propellers and yaw control in vertical ight mode. QUX-
and the body shape is determined by taking both the utilization 02 and QTW UAVs, on the other hand, utilize aperons on the trail-
and the aerodynamic efciency into account. Mechanical design ing edges of the wings. To the best of our knowledge, this work also
of SUAVI is carried out by considering weight limitation, strength provides the rst full nonlinear dynamical model for a quad tilt-
and utilization of the aircraft. To obtain a prototype that is both wing UAV.
lightweight and strong against ight and landing forces, the body The rest of the paper is organized as follows: in Section 2 the de-
is designed to be produced using carbon composite material. For sign of SUAVI including aerodynamic and mechanical design, and
increasing the strength, a carbon composite pipe chassis is utilized prototyping is presented. The ight control system design is de-
as a backbone for the aircraft. This chassis supports the light- tailed in Section 3. Control system hardware is explained in Section
weight skins of the fuselage and wings. To provide easy assembly 4, and simulation and real ight test results are provided in Section
of the wings to the body and smooth wing tilting operation, needle 5. Finally, the paper is concluded with some remarks in Section 6
bearing supported all aluminum wing tilting mechanisms are uti- and some future work is indicated.
lized in the wing-body joints.
To develop ight control system, a full dynamical model is de-
2. Design and prototyping
rived using NewtonEuler formulation. A hierarchical control sys-
tem, including a high level controller that is responsible for the
The design of SUAVI is shaped based on the operational require-
switching of the low-level controllers into the closed-loop system,
ments. The aircraft is aimed to operate in surveillance missions
generating GPS based attitude references and performing safety
such as trafc control, security missions, and disasters including
checks, and low level controllers for stabilization of the aerial vehi-
indoor-outdoor res, oods, earthquakes. To satisfy the require-
cle, is designed and implemented. In line with the control system
ments of these tasks, it is planned to takeoff and land vertically, ho-
hierarchy, vertical, transition and horizontal mode ight control-
ver and y in an airspeed range of 060 km/h for both stationary
lers are developed. In order to design ight controllers, the dynam-
and in-motion surveillance. The vertical ight endurance of the air-
ics of the aerial vehicle is divided into two subsystems, namely
craft is planned to reach half hour whereas its horizontal ight
position and attitude subsystems. PID controllers are designed
endurance is to exceed 1 h. SUAVI is also aimed to be compact
for position subsystem that has slower dynamics when compared
for indoor surveillance and mechanically simple for operational
with the attitude subsystem. Reference attitude angles are com-
reliability. To meet such ight capabilities with these features,
puted by utilizing the dynamic inversion method and the virtual
SUAVI is designed as an electric powered quad tilt-wing air vehicle
control inputs generated by position controllers. Attitude subsys-
where four motors are mounted on the mid-span leading-edges of
tem is linearized by feedback linearization and reference angles
the wings and the wings are tilted in horizontal-vertical position
computed by position subsystem are used by the PID type control-
range. Motors rotate constant pitch propellers for mechanical sim-
lers that are designed for attitude subsystem. The proposed control
plicity, altering thrust through RPM change and the electric source
architecture is implemented in hardware using various sensors,
is high capacity LiPo batteries. In this design, wings are tilted to
actuators, a Gumstix microcomputer and several microcontrollers.
vertical position to form a quad-rotor helicopter using only motor
There are several unique features that distinguishes this work
thrusts for lift on vertical takeoff, landing and hovering. When hor-
from the other quad tilt-wing UAV designs reported in the litera-
izontal ight is required, wings are tilted gradually to the appropri-
ture. When compared with the QUX-02 of Japan Aerospace Explo-
ate angles of the desired speed and motor thrusts are adjusted
ration Agency [17], SUAVI is a more compact platform with 1 m
accordingly. At high speeds, wings are tilted to nearly-horizontal
versus 1.1 m fuselage length and 1 m versus 1.38 m wingspan. It
position to generate lift and motors generate forward thrust, form-
is approximately 30% heavier, but it is designed to achieve nearly
ing a tandem wing airplane. The design length and wingspan of the
half hour vertical and 1 h horizontal ights, whereas the reported
aircraft are both 1 m and design weight is 4.5 kg.
ights of the QUX-02 do not exceed 16 min including horizontal
ight modes. SUAVI utilizes the same wings at the front and the
rear to simplify the prototyping and increase the part commonal- 2.1. Aerodynamic design
ity. Its aerodynamic characterization is carried out by considering
different angle of attacks and motor thrusts at front and rear wings The aim of the aerodynamic design is to choose the most appro-
for the nominal ight. On the other hand, in QUX-02 the rear wings priate propulsion system and to minimize air drag while generat-
have larger wing spans than the front wings for the utilization of ing sufcient lift for ight with the least complicated and most
similar wing angle of attacks at front and rear wings. SUAVI is a lightweight structure.
mechanically optimized carbon composite UAV with a complex The criteria in the selection of the motors are to produce the re-
onboard control system and full and semi-autonomous ight capa- quired shaft power, to be lightweight and mechanically durable,
bilities, while QUX-02 is a preliminary work produced using balsa and to have effective cooling for long duration ights. Based on
wood for the feasibility determination of quad tilt-wing congura- these criteria, Great Planes Rimre 42-40-800 motor is chosen as
tion with a simple control system and semi-autonomous ight. the source of propulsion. It delivers up to 1.6 kg of static thrust
When compared with the QTW of G.H. Craft [18], SUAVI is with appropriate propellers when powered with 11.1 V batteries
clearly a more compact and light-weight platform with 1 m versus and is allowed to draw 32 A maximum current. For the decision
1.61 m fuselage length, 1 m versus 1.34 m wingspan and 4.46 kg on the propeller type to be used, several suggested APC electric
versus 24 kg weight. QTW is nearly four times heavier than SUAVI motor propellers from size 1100 800 to 1600 500 (former number:
and is designed for high speed ights (up to 150 km/h) in horizon- diameter in inch, latter number: pitch in inch) are tested on the
E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745 725
Fig. 2. Spanwise airow without winglets (a) and reduction of the spanwise airow by winglets (b).
726 E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745
Fig. 3. Streamlines showing the downwash and its effect on the rear wing.
65 100
Front motortest data Front wingtest data
Front motorapproximation
90 Front wingapproximation
60
40 30
20
35
10
30 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Airspeed (m/s) Airspeed (m/s)
(a) (b)
35
Currenttest data
Currentapproximation
30
Current (A)
25
20
15
10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Airspeed (m/s)
(c)
Fig. 6. Motor PWM duty ratios (a), wing angles (b) and current drawn by the half model for steady ight at various speeds.
Table 1
Look-up table for motor PWM percentages, wing angle of attacks and current drawn by two motors on the half model for nominal ight.
Air speed (m/s) Front motor (%) Rear motor (%) Front wing angle () Rear wing angle () Current (A)
0 62.5 62.5 90.0 90.0 32.0
1 62.5 62.5 88.0 88.0 32.4
2 62.5 62.5 86.0 86.0 32.4
3 54.3 59.0 76.0 86.0 30.8
4 46.9 53.5 68.0 82.0 27.0
5 41.0 46.1 54.0 71.0 22.8
6 41.8 41.8 41.0 51.0 21.0
7 41.8 41.8 31.5 45.0 20.2
8 41.8 41.8 29.0 39.0 20.0
9 38.3 38.3 24.0 30.0 16.7
10 36.7 36.7 16.0 25.0 14.6
11 34.0 34.0 14.5 20.5 12.3
12 34.8 34.8 11.0 15.5 11.9
13 33.6 33.6 10.0 14.5 10.5
14 38.7 38.7 8.0 12.0 12.5
15 42.2 42.2 7.0 9.0 14.1
16 45.7 45.7 5.5 8.0 15.2
17 49.6 49.6 4.5 6.0 17.5
speed range. It is found that at high and low speeds, angle of at- PWMs and current requirements of the half model are tabulated
tacks and motor throttle settings of front and rear wings are similar in Table 1. This table is used as a look-up table by the control sys-
and they differ at the moderate speed range due to the downwash tem in the transition ights.
effect of the front wing (Fig. 6a and b). It is also found that the most In light of Table 1, two motors on the half model draw 32 A in
economical ight speed of SUAVI is approximately 12 m/s that cor- vertical ight (wing angles are both 90) and 10.5 A in the most
responds to 43.2 km/h (Fig. 6c), which is close to what was pre- economical ight speed (13 m/s) in horizontal ight (wing angles
dicted by ANSYS simulations. The wing angle of attacks, motor are 10 and 14.5). Therefore, the aerial vehicle with four motors
728 E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745
Fig. 7. CAD model of the body with partial covering for demonstrating the chassis.
Fig. 8. CAD model of the wing with regionally cut upper skin to reveal the details
(a) and with its nal shape (b).
Fig. 10. CAD model of SUAVI in horizontal (a), transition (b) and vertical (c) ight
modes.
consumes 64 A in vertical and 21 A in horizontal ight. Thus, in or- 2.2. Mechanical design
der to keep the aerial vehicle in hover for half an hour, 32 Ah bat-
tery capacity is required. Since the LiPo battery used on the The main goal of the mechanical design is to obtain the most
prototype has 30 Ah capacity, approximately half an hour vertical lightweight structure that is capable of withstanding the possible
ight is predicted. Additionally, four motors require 21 Ah battery loadings in vertical, horizontal and transition ight modes. To
capacity for 1 h horizontal ight. With 30 Ah battery capacity, achieve this, carbon ber reinforced plastic, a material that is known
more than 1 h ight is expected. to be the best in terms of strength/weight ratio, is determined to be
Fig. 9. CAD model of the wing-tilting mechanism-carbon pipe connection (a) and wing-tilting mechanism detail (b).
E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745 729
Fig. 11. Hand lay-up (a), vacuum-bagging (b and c), cured skin (d) and the cutting marks on the skins (e).
Fig. 12. Inner parts being attached to the lower wing skin (a), joining of the upper skin onto the wing (b) and joining of the winglet (c).
Fig. 13. Wing tilting mechanism (a), the assembly of the fuselage skeleton (b).
the production material of SUAVI. To improve the durability in com- A carbon composite tube chassis is embedded in the design as a
pression loading, usage of sandwich structure on the entire body is strong skeleton for carrying the loads and reducing the weight of
preferred. In this sandwich structure, lightweight Aramid honey- the skins as much as possible (Fig. 7). This chassis extends from
comb core material is surrounded by carbon ber cloth on both the fuselage to the tips of the landing arms.
sides. This structure makes the skins of the UAV to perform like an The sandwich structure that carries the stresses on the wings
I-beam, in which the strong material is kept at outer sides to in- transmits the generated forces to the carbon composite tube wing
crease the second moment of inertia and low-density material is spars. Likewise, the aluminum elbow connection parts connect the
kept inside just to keep the outer sides parallel to and apart from landing arms and the electric motors to the spars to transmit the
each other. By this way, the skins of the UAV can be produced light- landing impact and motor thrusts to the fuselage through a durable
weight and still strong, even against bending and compression. and stiff chassis. The spars are attached to the inner walls of both
730 E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745
the upper and lower wing surfaces, providing nearly all stresses on
the wing surfaces to be in tension and transmitted continuously to
the spars (Fig. 8a).
The motors are mounted nearly at the mid-span of the wings
and the landing arms are placed directly behind the motors to min-
imize possible bending moments observed during touchdown.
There are tail-n alike extensions designed for the tips of the land-
ing arms to prevent the failing of wing tilting servos to keep the
wings vertical during possible problematic touchdowns with some
forward motion (Fig. 8b). Additionally, the LiPo batteries are lo-
cated in the wings to keep the rolling inertia near to pitching iner-
tia and at a reasonable level for better stability characteristics.
To keep the fuselage both lightweight and stiff against bending
and torsion, the front and rear wing tilting mechanisms are also
connected through the same type carbon composite tube (Fig. 9a
and b). This tube ends at the front wing tilting mechanism,
whereas it extends further beyond the rear wing tilting mechanism
to provide a stiff support for the vertical stabilizer of the aerial
vehicle. This tube is xed to the outer static structure of the
wing-tilting mechanism (Fig. 9a and b). This outer static structure
is charged to carry the high torque servo near the rotating shaft
and the needle bearings on which the shaft is rotating, transmit
forces from the wings to the body, and carry the aerodynamic
cover.
The servo rotates the shaft, on which the wing spars are xed,
through a parallel mechanism with around 100 tilting range.
The wing spars are inserted into the shaft and then screwed to it
on matching holes with setscrews to keep the wings at correct
place and angle. An important detail on this system is the thin
rings stuck on the tips of the wing spars. The outer diameter of
the carbon composite tubes vary in the order of some 0.1 mm.
Finally, it is useful to pass the cabling between the wings and
the fuselage through the carbon composite spars and the rotating
shafts in the wing tilting mechanism (See Fig. 14a in Section 2.3).
Otherwise, these cables are damaged by the carbon composite skin
of the fuselage after several numbers of verticalhorizontal transi-
tions during the operation of SUAVI. There are also four aerody-
namic cover parts produced from sandwich structured carbon
composite material with aramid honeycomb core: the nose, the
stern, the lower mid part and the upper mid part. The resulting Fig. 15. SUAVI prototype in horizontal (a) and vertical (b) ight modes.
CAD model of the SUAVI is depicted in Fig. 10.
process (Fig. 11b and c). The cured parts are extracted from the
2.3. Prototyping mold (Fig. 11d) and the grooves are cut for the motor placement
(Fig. 11e).
For prototyping, sandwich structured carbon composite mate- For the assembly of the wings, a preassembled wing spar, elbow
rial with Aramid honeycomb core and 90 g/m2 090 plain wave connector and landing arm group with the ight-ready cabling of
carbon cloth is utilized. The production of the skins begins with motor throttle pulse and battery power transmission is xed on
the hand lay-up of the impregnated carbon cloth and honeycomb the lower wing skin on the mold with epoxy (Fig. 12a). After the
core (Fig. 11a). They are cured through the vacuum bagging xing of the upper skin of the wing (Fig. 12b), the assembly of
Fig. 14. Cable connections during the assembly (a) and addition of electronic control system (b).
E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745 731
zw) and the Body frame B:(Ob, xb, yb, zb). In the earth xed inertial
reference frame (world frame), xw is directed northwards, yw is di-
rected eastwards, zw is directed downwards and Ow is the origin of
the world frame. Similarly, in the body frame, xb is directed to the
front of the vehicle, yb is directed to the right of the vehicle, zb is
directed downwards and Ob is the origin at the center of mass of
the aerial vehicle.
The position and linear velocity of the vehicles center of mass
in the world frame are expressed as
Pw X; Y; ZT ; V w P_ w X;
_ Y; _ T
_ Z 1
Vehicles attitude and its time derivative in the world frame are de-
ned as
Fig. 16. External forces and moments acting on the vehicle.
aw /; h; wT ; Xw a_ w /;
_ h; _ T
_ w 2
where /, h and w are roll, pitch and yaw angles, respectively. The
orientation of the body frame with respect to the world frame is ex-
pressed by the rotation matrix
2 3
cw c h s/ sh cw c/ sw c / sh c w s/ sw
6 7
Rwb /; h; w 4 sw ch s/ sh sw c/ cw c / sh sw s/ c w 5 3
sh s/ ch c / ch
Wf W x ; W y ; W z ; 0; W t ; 0T Table 2
2 2 33 Modeling parameters.
2F fD hf ; v x ; v z F rD hr ; v x ; v z
6 6 77 Symbol Description Magnitude
6 Rwb 6 0 77
6 4 2F f h ; v ; v F r h ; v ; v 5 7 m mass 4.5 kg
66
L f x z L r x z 7
7 20 ls Rotor distance to cog along y axis 0.3 m
6 0 7
4 f r 5 ll Rotor distance to cog along x axis 0.3 m
2ll F L hf ; v x ; v z F L hr ; v x ; v z Ixx Moment of inertia along x axis 0.405 kg m2
0 Iyy Moment of inertia along y axis 0.405 kg m2
Izz Moment of inertia along z axis 0.72 kg m2
where F iL hi ; v x ; v z and F iD hi ; v x ; v z are the lift and drag forces pro- k1,4 Torque/force ratio 0.01 Nm/N
duced at the wings and i = f,r subscripts denote front and rear an- k2,3 Torque/force ratio 0.01 Nm/N
gles, respectively. Wx, Wy and Wz are aerodynamic forces along X,
Y, Z axis of world coordinate frame and Wt is torques produced by
aerodynamic forces around Y axis of body xed coordinate frame.
System actuator vector, E(n)x2, is dened as For the transition and the horizontal ight modes, dynamics of
2 3 the aerial vehicle can be written as
c/ sh cw s/ sw uv cw ch uh
6 7
6 c/ sh sw s/ cw uv sw ch uh 7
6
6
7
7 X 1 cw ch ch c/ sh cw s/ sw sh u1 W x
Rwb F th 6 c/ ch uv sh uh 7 m f f
Enx2 6 7 21
M th 6 l s kc hf ufdif ls shr kc hr ur dif 7 1
6 s hf 7 Y sw ch chf c/ sh sw s/ cw shf u1 W y
6 ufsum shf ursum shr ll 7 m
4 5
1
ls chf kshf ufdif ls chr kshr urdif Z sh chf c/ ch shf u1 mg W z
m
where u2 Iyy Izz J prop
p_ qr q xp s hf
Ixx Ixx Ixx
ufdif kx21 x22 ; urdif kx23 x24 ; ufsum kx21 x22 ;
u3 Izz Ixx J prop
ursum kx23 x24 ; uv shf ufsum shr ursum ; q_ pr pshf rchf xp W t
Iyy Iyy Iyy
uh chf ufsum chr ursum ; hf h1 h2 ; hr h3 h4 u4 Ixx Iyy J prop
r_ pq q xp c hf 28
Izz Izz Izz
To simplify the analysis, in the sequel the aerodynamic downwash
effect of front wings on the rear wings will be neglected and the Setting the front and rear wing angles to 0, the dynamical model in
front and rear wing angles are assumed to be equal (hf = hr). In this transition and horizontal ight modes (28) becomes the model for a
case the system actuator vector becomes four rotor tandem wing airplane as follows:
2 3
cw ch chf c/ sh cw s/ sw shf u1
6 sw ch ch c/ sh sw s/ cw sh u1 7 X 1 cw ch u1 W x
6 f f 7 m
6 7
6 s h c h c / c h sh u 1 7 1
Enx2 6
6
f f
7
7 22 Y sw ch u1 W y
6 s h f
u 2 c hf
u 4 7 m
6 7 1
4 shf u3 5 Z sh u1 mg W z
m
chf u2 shf u4
u2 Iyy Izz
p_ qr
Control inputs u1,2,3,4 used in (22) are explicitly written below: Ixx Ixx
u3 Izz Ixx J prop
u1 k x21 x22 x23 x24 23 q_ pr r xp W t
Iyy Iyy Iyy
u2 kls x21 x22 x23 x24 24 u4 Ixx Iyy J prop
2 r_ pq q xp 29
u3 kll x1 x22 x23 x24 25 Izz Izz Izz
u4 kk x21 x22 x23 x24 26 For the attitude control, the attitude dynamics of the aerial vehicle
Neglecting the wing forces and setting hf = hr = p/2, the dynamics of must be expressed in the world frame. To this end, rotational part of
the aerial vehicle resembles a quadrotor model reported in the lit- rigid body dynamics given in (8) can be rewritten as
erature [2224]. Position and attitude dynamics of the aerial vehicle X_ b I1
b Xb Ib Xb M t 30
in quadrotor mode can be expressed as follows:
and the derivative of (7) is
X 1 c/ sh cw s/ sw u1
m X_ w B_ Xb BX_ b 31
1
Y c/ sh sw s/ cw u1 By using (5) and substituting (30) into (31), the equation becomes
m
c/ ch X_ w BE
_ Xw BI1 EXw Ib EXw BI1 M t 32
Z u1 g b b
m
u2 Iyy Izz J prop Multiplying both sides of (32) by the transformed inertia matrix
p_ qr qxp Maw ET Ib E and using the fact that E_ EBE,
_ the following equa-
Ixx Ixx Ixx
tion is obtained.
u3 Izz Ixx J prop
q_ pr pxp _ w ET Ib E_ Xw ET EXw Ib EXw ET M t
Iyy Iyy Iyy Maw X 33
u4 Ixx Iyy
r_ pq 27 Coriolis terms in above equation can be cast into the matrix C as
Izz Izz
Caw ; Xw ET Ib E_ ET SEXw Ib E
where xp = x1 x2 x3 + x4.
734 E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745
where S(.) is the skew-symmetric matrix that replaces the cross- closed-loop system depending on the ight mode, forming the
product. The attitude dynamics expressed in the world frame can communication link with the ground station and performing all
be written in a more compact form as follows checks including security. In case of an emergency such as the lost
_ w Caw ; Xw Xw ET M t of the balance of the aircraft in the transition and horizontal
Maw X 34
ights, this high level control immediately switches the aircraft
The parameters of the vehicle used in mathematical modeling are back into the vertical ight conguration to prevent any crashes.
tabulated in Table 2. The low-level controllers are responsible for obtaining sensor
measurements, performing necessary ltering for reliable state
3.2. Flight control system estimations, gathering the human operator inputs on the system
and handling the low-level control calculations.
SUAVI has two fundamental ight modes, which are the vertical The high-level control is implemented in a Gumstix microcom-
and horizontal ights (Fig. 18). The wings are vertical during take- puter with the GPS, camera and RF communication module being
off, hovering and landing, and tilted when forward motion is re- directly connected. The low-level controllers are implemented in
quired. The tilt angle is determined based on the requirements of microcontroller based control circuit (Fig. 20).
the present ight speed. The control system needs to handle all In order to design ight controllers, i.e. position and attitude
of these issues for accomplishing the stable ight and successful controllers of vertical, transition and horizontal modes, dynamics
reference tracking. of aerial vehicle is divided into two subsystems, namely position
To address these issues, a hierarchical control system (Fig. 19) and attitude subsystems [25]. Since the position subsystem has
is developed. The high-level controller (supervisor) is responsible slow dynamics, this subsystem is utilized to create reference an-
for generating feasible trajectories based on GPS and camera data, gles for the attitude subsystem by exploiting the structure of
generating corresponding attitude references for the low-level the position subsystem. For simplicity, the downwash effects of
controllers, switching of the low-level controllers into the the front wings on rear wings will be neglected, therefore equal
E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745 735
front and rear wing angles will be assumed, i.e. hf = hr. Control cal- 3.2.1. Vertical mode position controllers
culations will be based on front wing angels. A development with- In order to design vertical mode position controllers, rst the
out this assumption will be much more involved. However, it aerial vehicle position (X, Y and Z) dynamics is recalled; i.e.
should be noted that in practical ight tests a look-up table which
is obtained from the wind tunnel tests is used by the high level X 1 cw ch ch c/ sh cw s/ sw sh u1 W x 35
controller to command the servos to place the rear wings at a m f f
Desired roll and pitch angles computed using (45) and (46) will be
references for the attitude subsystem. It should be noted that the
desired yaw angle can be set to any reference value. Note that the
total thrust and the desired attitude angles are functions of the wing
angles (hf = hr). In the literature there exists such reference angle
calculations for quadrotors [25], however calculations that depend
on wing angles are not studied for tilt-wing or tilt-rotor quadrotors.
Our developments here provide reference angles for quadrotors that
have tilted wings or rotors.
where l~ 1; l
~ 2 and l
~ 3 are new virtual inputs. Eqs. (41)(43) can be
solved for the total thrust u1, desired roll (/d) and pitch (hd) angles
as
q
u1 l~ 21 l~ 22 l~ 23 44
!
c2
/d arcsin 45
u1 shf
~
l3 u1 chf u1 c1 shf c/d
hd arcsin 46
c21 l~ 23
where c1 and c2 are the auxiliary variables and they are dened as
c1 l~ 1 cwd l~ 2 swd 47
c2 l~ 1 swd l~ 2 cwd 48 Fig. 22. Gumstix Overo microcomputer with its onboard camera.
E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745 737
800
ated by tilted wings. The purpose of the horizontal ight mode is
to track given trajectory along X and Y axes. For the trajectory 600
tracking along X axis the total thrust will be used. For the tracking
along Y axis the vertical component of the total thrust is directed 400
by rolling the aerial vehicle. In order to design the controller for
X axis and compute the total thrust, dynamics of X can be linear- 200
ized as
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
1 u1 ch W x
X 51 x 10
4
m f sample [n]
mode, the total thrust is directed by rolling the aerial vehicle. De- 700
sired roll angle can again be computed using (50). But in this case, 650
the total thrust u1 is calculated from (52). Similar to the transition 600
mode, desired roll angle is a reference angle for attitude subsystem 550
and desired pitch angle is set to zero (hd = 0) in order to make the 500
fuselage parallel to the ground. Yaw angle reference is given arbi- 450
trarily in horizontal mode.
400
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000
3.2.4. Attitude controllers sample [n]
Attitude controllers are the same for all three ight modes. De-
sired attitude angles given in Sections 3.2.1, 3.2.2 and 3.2.3 posi-
(b)
tion controller section are used as reference angles. To design
Fig. 24. Accelerometer readings around x, y, z axes during hover without (a) and
attitude controllers, (34) can be rewritten as with anti-aliasing lters.
_ w Caw ; Xw Xw ET Mth Mw
Maw X 53
where Mt Mth + Mw. Note that gyroscopic effects included in Mt controller design. The attitude dynamics given in (53) is fully actu-
are neglected. Since gyroscopic effects on propellers are small ated, therefore it is feedback linearizable. Consider the following
enough to be neglected, these moments are not considered in transformation for feedback linearization:
738 E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745
600 15
Unfiltered
Filtered 10
500 5
0
Sonar data [cm]
roll angle
400 5
10
300 15
20
200 25 (acc)
(gyro integral)
30
(Kalman)
100 35
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
0
time [s]
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
4
(a)
Samples x 10
40
Fig. 25. The raw and the ltered altitude measurements from sonar. (acc)
35 (gyro integral)
(Kalman)
g~ Mth Ib Eg ET Caw ; Xw Xw Mw 54 30
pitch angle
where g~ is a new virtual control input vector and g is the virtual 25
control input vector for attitude subsystem. These control inputs 20
have three components and they are dened as 15
T T 10
g~ g~ 4 g~ 5 g~ 6 ; g g4 g5 g6 55
5
In light of (22), (54) and (55), it follows that
0
g~ 4 shf u2 chf u4 56
5
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
g~ 5 shf u3 57
time [s]
g~ 6 chf u2 shf u4 58 (b)
The following PID controllers are designed to generate virtual con-
Fig. 26. Kalman lter results in roll (a) and pitch (b) during ight.
trol inputs, g4,g5,g6; i.e.
Z t
g4 K p / e/ K i/ e/ dt K d/ e_ / 59
0
Z 3 Fx
t
g5 K p h eh K ih eh dt K dh e_ h 60
Wind Forces [N]
F
2 y
0
Z t
Fz
1
g6 K p w ew K iw ew dt K dw e_ w 61
0 0
where attitude tracking errors are dened as eq = qd q for q = /, h, 1
w. It should again be emphasized that in vertical ight mode de-
2
sired roll and pitch angles (/d, hd) are computed from position sub- 0 20 40 60 80 100
system, whereas in transition and horizontal ight mode only Mx
desired roll angle is computed from position subsystem. Pitch angle 0.2 M
Wind Moments [Nm]
y
reference for transition and horizontal mode is set to hd = 0. On the
Mz
other hand, the desired yaw angle is specied by the user or the 0.1
high level controller for all three ight modes.
0
It is well known that physical inputs for quadrotor type aerial
vehicles are rotor rotational speeds that generate motor thrusts. 0.1
The relationship between control inputs and rotor speeds is given
through (23)(26) The total thrust u1 generated by rotors is given 0.2
0 20 40 60 80 100
in (44), (49) and (52) for vertical, transition and horizontal modes, Time [s]
respectively. In light of (56)(58), the other control inputs u24 can
easily be found as Fig. 27. Wind forces and moments.
g~ 5
u3 62 control efforts on the plant and several lters to make the sensor
shf
data more accurate and reliable. The prototype with all the elec-
" #1 tronics mounted is shown in Fig. 21.
u2 shf chf g~ 4 The high-level controller in the hierarchical control system of
63
u4 c hf shf g~ 6 SUAVI is implemented in a Gumstix microcomputer (Fig. 22). As
the high-level controller, Gumstix utilizes data from the GPS and
the camera that is connected to the camera port of OMAP3530 pro-
4. Control system hardware cessor. The image processing based operations are performed using
the OpenCV library. The DSP core on the microcomputer allows the
The electronic ight control system of SUAVI utilizes various computations of image processing algorithms at higher speeds due
sensors for situational awareness, actuators to apply the required to its high computational power.
E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745 739
X
1000 Xd
500
X [m]
500
0 20 40 60 80 100
5 Y
Yd
Y [m]
5
0 20 40 60 80 100
50 Z
Z
d
0
Z [m]
50
Fig. 31. Trajectory tracking and landing in the vertical mode.
100
0 20 40 60 80 100
Time [s]
0.1
d
[rad]
0
0.1
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.1 d
[rad]
0
0.1
0 20 40 60 80 100
3
x 10
2
d
[rad]
real-time or sporadic tasks. This separation guarantees the opera- the ground altitude measurement, a Maxbotix EZ4 sonar with
tion of the 100 Hz hard real-time control loop without missing 2.54 cm (100 ) of resolution for up to 6.45 m distance is used.
any deadline. A VTI Technologies SCP1000 altimeter with 10 cm resolution is
utilized for above the sea level altitude measurements at higher
4.1. Sensors altitudes and an Eagle Tree Airspeed MicroSensor V3 airspeed sen-
sor with pitot tube is used for the horizontal airspeed measure-
To achieve satisfactory stabilization and trajectory tracking ments. An ADH Technology D2523T GPS unit with a high-gain
tasks, reliable state estimates need to be acquired by the hierarchi- active antenna and 50 channel GPS receiver circuits, which can de-
cal control system. For obtaining these reliable state estimates, var- liver 2 Hz GPS data is embedded in the system for world coordinate
ious sensors are utilized in SUAVI. A Sparkfun 6 DOF v4 inertial estimations.
measurement unit (IMU) is utilized for the estimation of roll, pitch,
yaw angles and angular velocities through its 3-axis accelerometer, 4.2. Actuators
3-axis gyro, 3-axis magnetometer. It is placed on the aerial vehi-
cles center of mass to obtain more accurate attitude information. To apply the forces demanded by the control system for the
A Honeywell HMC6343 tilt-compensated magnetometer is in- stable ight of SUAVI in all possible ight conditions, reliable and
cluded in the system for reliable heading measurements. For above highly capable actuators are required. Great Planes Rimre
E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745 741
Reference
10 Measurement
Roll angles
0
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
10
Pitch angles
0
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
20
Heading
10
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Altitude [inch]
200
100
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Time [s]
42-40-800 is chosen among a variety of RC aircraft electric motors 4.3.3. Sensor fusion via Kalman lter
for propulsion, since it is a high efciency direct drive brushless To obtain accurate roll and pitch estimations, an Extended Kal-
motor. It can deliver more than 1.6 kg of thrust with 14 7 in. pro- man Filter (EKF) algorithm is implemented. Gyros in the IMU have
pellers. For controlling the motor speeds, Great Planes Electriy Sil- reliable angular rate measurements, however it is not possible to
ver Series 35 motor driver is preferred, which is capable of estimate angular position through integrating the gyro readings,
delivering up to 35 A continuously, where the maximum allowed since due to integration even a small offset grows without any
current of the chosen motor is 32 A. bound (Fig. 26). Accelerometer based orientation estimation does
For tilting the wings in the horizontal-vertical range, TS170 high not suffer from this drift, but it is delayed due to the anti-aliasing
torque digital RC servos with 18 kg cm torque and titanium gears lters applied for ltering the noise. EKF is utilized for combining
are utilized. They are deliberately chosen that way to ensure very the fast response and no drift advantages of these two sensors to
robust wing orientation even in the existence of disturbances of get a reliable attitude estimation [26,27]. We should emphasize
wind gusts and also during landing. the fact that this Euler angle estimation method is only valid for
the case of non-maneuvering ight conditions.
4.3. Filters In EKF, the state transition (propagation) and observation (mea-
surement) models are nonlinear functions of state and inputs.
In order to obtain reliable feedback signals for ight control sys- Therefore, the following non-linear dynamic model is used as a
tem, several analog and digital lters are implemented in the con- system model for the design of the lter.
trol system of SUAVI.
xk f xk1 ; uk1 gk1 65
zk hxk mk 66
4.3.1. Analog anti-aliasing lter
The vibrations that are mainly induced by the rotating propel- where gk and mk are process and measurement noises with covari-
lers cause severe noise on the accelerometer readings (Fig. 24a). ance matrices Q and R, respectively. In light of (7), it follows that
Analog anti-aliasing lters with 0.6 Hz cut-off frequency are ap-
plied on the analog outputs of the accelerometers to cope with it. a_ w Xw B/; h Xb 67
The inclusion of this low-pass lter brings reasonable readings or,
for the utilization in the sensor fusion (Fig. 24b). 2 3 2 32 3
/_ 1 s/ t h c/ th p
6_7 6 76 7
4.3.2. Digital exponentially weighted moving average lter 4 h 5 40 c/ s/ 54 q 5 68
The noisy sonar reading (Fig. 25) for the distance between the w_ 0 s/ =ch c/ =ch r
aircraft and the ground is handled by a digital exponentially
weighted moving average lter. This lter gives an estimation of Discretizing (68) using approximate derivative, we obtain
the height, which is a convex combination of the lter output in awk awk1 TBawk1 Xbk1 69
the previous step and the current raw sensor measurement where
the coefcient of the raw sensor measurement a is calculated State evolution will then be governed by
adaptively as: " #
aw awk1 TBawk1 Xbk1
xk , 70
jDSj bg bgk1 ggk1
a d1 d2 1
64 k
jDSj jDSj e
where bg 2 R3 denotes the bias in gyros, T refers to the sampling
where DS=St St1, St is the raw measurement at time t, d1 = 1.4, time and gg is the noise associated with the gyro bias. Kalman lter
d2 = 0.2 and e = 0.1. corrects the bias term at each cycle by comparing the estimation of
742 E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745
angle with the measurements coming from the accelerometers. The Hk I22 024 77
lter has two steps: prediction and correction. Prediction equations
The nonlinear mapping h(xk) that denes the accelerometer outputs
are:
in terms of Euler angles is quite involved. Instead of working with
^xkjk1 f ^xk1jk1 ; uk1 71 such a complicated mapping, the measurement matrix (H) is simply
formed by concatenating a 2 2 identity matrix with a 2 4 zero
and matrix to indicate that roll and pitch angles can be obtained from
Pkjk1 Ak1 Pk1jk1 ATk1 Q k1 72 the measurements of the accelerometers using simple trigonometric
relations. Pkjk1 in (72) is known as a priori error covariance matrix
Correction equations are: and is used in (73) to compute Kalman gain (Kk). The optimal state
1 vector ^xkjk is calculated as the sum of predicted state vector ^xkjk1
K k P kjk1 HTk Hk Pkjk1 HTk Rk 73 and the correction term K k zk H^xkjk1 which is computed by mea-
^xkjk ^xkjk1 K k zk H^xkjk1 74 surements coming from the accelerometers. Pkjk in (75) refers to pos-
teriori error covariance matrix and is used to update Pkjk1 in (72).
and Note that the lter needs initial conditions of ^x0 and P0j0.
Pkjk I K k Hk P kjk1 75 The elements of Q and R matrices in Kalman lter can be tuned
experimentally. This may enhance the performance of the lter. In
where A and H matrices are dened as our work, they are selected as follows:
@f 0:0001 0 0:2 0
Ak1 76 Q ;R 78
@xbx k1;k1 ;uk1 0 0:000001 0 0:2
E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745 743
Reference
10 Measurement
Roll angles
0
10
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
10
Pitch angles
0
10
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
350
Heading
340
330
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Altitude [inch]
200
100
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Time [s]
(a)
1000 Reference
Measurement
900
800
700
North [m]
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
800 600 400 200 0 200 400
East [m]
(b)
Fig. 37. Horizontal ight attitude, altitude (a) and GPS position (b) data of SUAVI.
EKF is implemented in the onboard microprocessors of the vehicle. 5.1. Simulation results
The correct estimation of the roll and pitch angles are achieved and
the drifts are eliminated. In a real ight experiment where the ver- The simulations are carried out in Matlab/Simulink environ-
tical ight and hover are realized, it is observed that EKF corrects ment. A typical surveillance scenario is considered where during
the bias term periodically and delivers driftless roll and pitch esti- the rst 10 sec, the aerial vehicle takes off and climbs to 10 m in
mations (Fig. 26). Since the aircraft is designed for surveillance mis- vertical mode (hf = hr = 90). Then it begins to tilt its wings between
sions, it is desired to have stable ight with relatively low roll and 10 and 0 sec, while it is moving in X direction and preserving its
pitch angles. This is why the roll/pitch movements are small in altitude. After wings reach 17 angle of attack in transition mode,
Fig. 26. the aerial vehicle ies to the desired location in horizontal mode
with constant 17 wing angle between 20 and 50 sec. Then, the
5. Simulation and experimental results aerial vehicle tilts its wings back to 90 in transition mode (50
60 sec) and then tracks a circular trajectory in vertical mode (60
Performance of the proposed controllers on the aerial vehicle 90 sec). Finally it lands in 20 sec in vertical mode. Throughout
are rst evaluated in several simulations and then tested in real the ight, desired yaw is set to 0. In order to test performance
ight experiments. of the developed controllers, external disturbances are also
744 E. Cetinsoy et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 723745
included. These external disturbances are generated as forces and stable take-off and landing. To this end, GPS measurements can
moments produced by wind that is modeled using Dryden Wind- be combined with the IMU or camera measurements in the EKF
Gust model [28] and depicted in Fig. 27. algorithm to generate smooth GPS position and velocity estimates.
Position and attitude tracking performance are depicted in Figs. It should also be noted that there is a camera in our system that
28 and 29, respectively. Note that altitudes take negative values, performs vision based control tasks such as takeoff and landing.
since the Z axis in the world frame is directed downwards. As At the moment, stable takeoff and landing are achieved using sonar
can be seen from the gures, the aerial vehicle successfully tracks and vision measurements.
the desired trajectory. During transition and horizontal ight (10
60 sec), pitch angle is set to 0 and roll angle is changing frequently
6. Conclusion and future work
to counteract wind forces and moments. On the other hand, the
aerial vehicle continuously changes its attitude to track desired
The work reported in this paper presents aerodynamic and
trajectory in vertical mode (60110 sec).
mechanical design, prototyping and ight control system design
Fig. 30 demonstrates trajectory tracking performance through-
of a new unmanned aerial vehicle (SUAVI) that can vertically take-
out the ight and Fig. 31 shows trajectory tracking and landing
off and land like a quad-rotor helicopter and horizontally y like an
performance in vertical mode. After successful horizontal ight
airplane. The aerodynamic design of the aerial vehicle is optimized
the aerial vehicle tracks circular trajectory and lands on the desired
by performing several simulations and wind tunnel tests. The
position ([640, 0, 0]) in vertical mode.
mechanical structure that supports the aerodynamic shape in all
Fig. 32 depicts motor thrusts produced by rotors. Notice that in
ight modes is determined with the wing tilting reliability, light-
vertical mode, each motor produces approximately 11.25 N to
ness and strength against the ight and landing loads under con-
compensate the aerial vehicles weight. Due to tilted motors and
sideration. Prototype of SUAVI is produced using carbon
wings, vertical component of the total thrust decreases in transi-
composite material. A full dynamical model of SUAVI is derived
tion mode (1020 and 5060 sec). Hence, in order to counteract
by using NewtonEuler formulation for the development of the
aerial vehicles weight higher motor thrusts are needed. As can
ight control system. A hierarchical control system that includes
be seen from the gure motor thrusts increase without exceeding
high and low-level controllers is developed and implemented in
maximum capacity of motors, 16 N, in transition mode. On the
Matlab environment for simulations and in the control hardware
other hand, motor thrusts are reduced to their 20% due to the lift
of the aerial vehicle for real ight. Performance of the ight control
forces (Fig. 33) generated by wings in horizontal mode (20
system is veried through various simulations and real ight tests.
50 sec). Since the aerial vehicle consumes less power and saves en-
As a future work, SUAVI will be tested in various operational
ergy, the ight endurance increases and the vehicle ies longer
scenarios in semi or full autonomous modes.
with the same battery capacity.
The prototype is also tested for ight with the developed con- Authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by
trol system. First, vertical ight tests are performed in several areas TUBITAK (Scientic and Technological Research Council of Turkey)
of Sabanci University campus and on a wide road outside the cam- under Grant 107M179.
pus under average wind and gust conditions. Fig. 34 depicts a ver-
tical ight test of the prototype where the attitude and the altitude References
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