Modeling, Planning, and Control for Hybrid UAV Transition Maneuvers

TL;DR

This paper reviews control methods for small tailsitter UAVs and proposes a new nonlinear dynamic model to design continuous, physically feasible transition maneuvers between hover and cruise, addressing a key industry challenge.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to designing physically realizable transition maneuvers for tailsitter UAVs using nonlinear modeling, aiming to improve safety and robustness.

Findings

Initial results show barriers to constant-altitude transition.

Proposed method attempts to bypass transition barriers.

Work lays groundwork for future transition maneuver designs.

Abstract

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become standard tools in reconnaissance and surveying for both civilian and defense applications. In the future, UAVs will likely play a pivotal role in autonomous package delivery, but current multi-rotor candidates suffer from poor energy efficiency leading to insufficient endurance and range. In order to reduce the power demands of package delivery UAVs while still maintaining necessary hovering capabilities, companies like Amazon are experimenting with hybrid Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) platforms. Tailsitter VTOLs offer a mechanically simple and cost-effective solution compared to other hybrid VTOL configurations, and while advances in hardware and microelectronics have optimized the tailsitter for package delivery, the software behind its operation has largely remained a critical barrier to industry adoption. Tailsitters currently lack a generic, computationally efficient method of control that can provide strong safety and robustness guarantees over the entire flight domain. Further, tailsitters lack a closed-form method of designing dynamically feasible transition maneuvers between hover and cruise. In this paper, we survey the modeling and control methods currently implemented on small-scale tailsitter UAVs, and attempt to leverage a nonlinear dynamic model to design physically realizable, continuous-pitch transition maneuvers at constant altitude. Primary results from this paper isolate potential barriers to constant-altitude transition, and a novel approach to bypassing these barriers is proposed. While initial results are unsuccessful at providing feasible transition, this work acts as a stepping stone for future efforts to design new transition maneuvers that are safe, robust, and computationally efficient.