Design and Simulation of a Quad Rotor Tail-Sitter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Atsushi Oosedo, Atsushi Konno, Takaaki Matumoto, Kenta Go, Kouji Masuko, Satoko Abiko and Masaru Uchiyama (Tohoku Univ.)

Abstract In this paper, we present the design and concept of a quad rotor tail-sitter UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). The designed UAV is composed of quad rotors and a xed wing. It can hover like a helicopter, and can cruise like a xed wing airplane. In order to verify this concept, a simulator of a quad rotor tail-sitter UAV is developed. Simulation results show the advantage in energy efciency of the proposed UAV over a conventional quad rotor helicopter type UAV. This paper also describes the development of the quad rotor tail-sitter UAV.

Transition from Takeoff

Transition to Landing

I. I NTRODUCTION A. Background Recent progress in electronics such as low cost, downsized high performance sensors and computers have activated a research and development of UAV. UAVs are starting to be widely used in civilian applications such as seeding, cropdusting, study of animals and plants, various observations in scientic research and communications relay. Additionally, UAVs are expected to perform dangerous mission such as rescue and exploring disaster site alone. VTOL aircraft make mission possible which are normally impossible to accomplish using either xed-wing or rotarywing aircraft alone. There are several ways to perform VTOL maneuver such as tilt-rotor, tilt-wing, thrust-vectoring, and tail-sitting etc. The simplest way is tail-sitting since it needs no extra actuators the VTOL maneuver unlike the tiltrotor, tilt-wing and thrust-vectoring. A simple mechanism is preferable for aerial robots, because weight saving is crucial for the VTOL maneuver. Tail-sitter VTOL aircraft switches between level ight and hover modes by changing its pitch angle of the fuselage by 90 [ ] as shown in Fig. 1. Recently, different types of tail-sitter VTOL UAVs have been developed. Green et al. developed a simple tail-sitter VTOL UAV which airframe is single propeller R/C airplane [1]. Stone has developed the T-Wing, which has a canard wing and tandem rotors [2]. US Air Force Research Lab and AeroVironment Inc. developed SkyTote which is equipped with a coaxial contra-rotating propeller [3]. These tail-sitter VTOL UAVs were developed based on xed-wing aircraft. They control their attitude by use of control surfaces (rudder, aileron and elevator). As a result,
A. Oosedo is with Department of Aerospace Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-01 Aramakiaza-Aoba, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan. {oosedo, konno,

Fig. 1.

Take off and landing of tail sitter VTOL

they have high stability in level ight, but stationary hovering is relatively difcult compared with a rotary-wing aircraft. There are many researches about improvement in attitude stability of rotary-wing UAV. Nonami has developed vision based autonomous helicopter [4]. Valenti et al. have developed the multi-vehicle ight testbed [5]. Bouabdallah has developed two nonlinear control techniques for miniature VTOL aircraft [6]. B. Purpose As for a rotary-wing aircraft, a quad rotor helicopter is commonly used in research for the reason of simple mechanism and high stability [7] <# However, a quad rotor < helicopter is difcult to y long-time and long-distance. Because it always outputs thrust more than deadweight. Hence, horizontal component of thrust is small. In single rotor tail-sitter UAV, propeller reaction torque has a bad effect on attitude control. Hence, it is difcult to control attitude during hovering. On the other hand, quad rotor helicopter can cancel gyroscopic effects and aerodynamic torques by using the front and the rear motors rotate counterclockwise while the other two rotate clockwise. Young et al. have proposed this strategy and developed a R/C aircraft in 2002 [8]. However, they did not succeed in autonomous level ight. In this paper, we present the concept of a quad rotor tailsitter UAV is composed of a quad rotors and xed-wing. It can hover like a quad rotor helicopter, and can y long distance like a xed-wing airplane. In order to verify this concept, a simulator of a quad rotor tail-sitter UAV is developed. Simulated results show the advantage in energy efciency of the proposed UAV over a conventional quad rotor helicopter type UAV. This paper
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uchiyama}@space.mech.tohoku.ac.jp

978-1-4244-9315-9/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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Transition from hovering flight Hovering flight Level flight Take off Transition from level flight

Landing Low speed flight

Fig. 2.

The concept of a quad rotor tail-sitter

Fig. 3.

Coordinate system.

also describe the design and development of a quad rotor tail-sitter UAV. II. T HE C ONCEPT OF A Q UAD ROTOR TAIL - SITTER UAV The concept of a quad rotor tail-sitter UAV is shown Fig. 2. A quad rotor tail-sitter has a four ight forms, hovering ight, low speed ight, level ight and transitional ight. In case of approaching a target or ground, the UAV hover and make a low speed ight like a quad rotor helicopter. In case of ying long distance, it tilt the fuselage with the propulsion unit forward and cruises like a xed-wing aircraft. Hence, the xed-wing generates the lift and improves energy consumption in level ight. Additionally, transitional ight is the transition from the hovering ight to level ight or from the level ight to hovering ight. There ight forms enable the UAV to accomplish the diversied mandates alone. III. I MPROVEMENT OF E NERGY C ONSUMPTION BY U SE OF F IXED - WING A. Electrical Power Consumption of Propeller The feature of the proposed UAV is a xed wing. The quad rotor tail-sitter is able to y long-distance compared with a standard quad rotor helicopter. In order to verify this concept, energy consumption in level ight is taken as a design criterion. Propeller thrust T , torque Q and necessary power P are dened as follows [10]: T = CT n2d 4 , P = CP n3 d 5 , Q = CQ n d ,
3 5

CT <#<& CP and CQ are expressed as a function of an advance rate J. J is dened as follows: V J= , (5) nd where V is ight speed. Hence, J inuences thrust and torque. We calculate the thrust and torque from these coefcients. Hence, the power is calculated from the thrust and torque. Additionally, if propulsion unit is brushless motor, the power will be electrical power consumption. IV. F LIGHT C ONTROL A. The Coordinate System The earth xed coordinate system denes X axis as true north, Y axis east, and Z axis as perpendicular downward. The fuselage xed coordinate system is dened as shown in Fig. 3. B. Aircraft Dynamics The full dynamics of the quad rotor tail-sitter is given as follows: [9] m du + qw rv =mg cos cos dt L cos D sin , dv + ru pw = mg cos sin , dt

(6)

(7)

(1) (2) (3) m

dw + pv qu =mg sin dt L sin D cos Ti ,

i=1 4

where is the atmospheric density, n is the propeller revolution speed, d is the propeller diameter, CT is the thrust coefcient, CQ is the torque coefcient and CP is the power coefcient. CT , CQ and CP are dependent on propeller form. CP and CQ have the following relationship: CP = 2 CQ . (4)
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(8)

Ixx

dp =qr(Iyy Izz ) dt Jr r (1)i i + l(T4 T2 ),

i=1 4

(9)

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PID Control

Td Td Qd Ttot_d altitude Distributor Aircraft Dynamics

Iyy

dq =pr(Izz Ixx ) dt +Jr q (1) i + l(T1 T3 ),

i i=1 4 dr =pq(Ixx Iyy ) + (1)i Qi , dt i=1 4

PID Control PID Control PID Control

(10)

Izz

(11)

Fig. 4.

Attitude and altitude control system.

where u, v and w are X, Y and Z directional velocity with respect to the aircraft body coordinates, p, q and r are the angular velocity with respect to the aircraft body coordinates, Ixx , Iyy and Izz are the fuselage moment of inertia around each axis of the aircraft body coordinates, Jr is the propeller gyroscopic effect, m is the fuselage mass, g is the gravitational acceleration, l is distance from the motor to center of gravity, is the pitch angle, is the yaw angle, L is the lift of the complete aircraft <#<& D is the drag of the complete aircraft <#<& i is number of each motor, is the propeller revolution speed and is the attack angle. The rst terms of the left handside in (6)(8) ( du , dv , dt dt dw dt ) are the gyroscopic effect resulting from the rigid body rotation in space and the second terms are generated by the propulsion group rotation. C. Attitude and Altitude Control The block diagram of the attitude and altitude controller is shown in Fig. 4. These controller generate the desired differential thrusts for roll, pitch and altitude control and desired torque for yaw control. The distributor calculate revolution speed of each motor in order to satisfy those desired thrust and torque as follows: 1 = 1 4 1 4 1 4 1 4 2Td Ttotd Qd C Cl 2Td Ttotd + Qd C Cl 2Td Ttotd Qd + C Cl 2Td Ttotd + Qd + C Cl 1 , CQ D3 1 , CQ D3 1 , CQ D3 1 , CQ D3 (12)

Distributor

Propeller Speed Reference

Propeller Speed Control Propeller Speed

Motor-Propeller Dynamics

Disturbance (Load Change, Battery Condition)

Fuselage Dynamics

Fig. 5.

Propeller revolution speed control system

D. Propeller Revolution Speed Control The block diagram of the propeller revolution speed controller is shown in Fig. 5. The desired propeller revolution speed is calculated from reference and current altitudes and attitude. Those controls are generally possible without propeller revolution speed feedback, but control performance is deteriorated by changes in battery conditions and motor load due to disturbances. Therefore, a feedback control of propeller revolution speed is introduced in the altitudes and attitude control systems to enhance robustness against these changes. The block labeled Propeller Speed Control in Fig. 5 is based on a PI controller. Control gains of the propeller revolution speed control system were determined through simulation. Transfer function R(s) from motor-applied voltage to propeller revolution speed is given as follows: R(s) = esL Kt , Tm Ra s + Ke Kt + Fd Ra (17)

2 =

(13)

3 =

(14)

4 =

(15)

where Td is the desired differential thrust of T2 and T4 , Td is the desired differential thrust of T1 and T3 , Qd is the desired torque, Ttotd is the desired total thrust, 14 is propeller revolution speed, C is a ratio of thrust coefcient to torque coefcient as follows: C= CT . CQ (16)

where L is the dead time, Ke is the induced motor voltage constant, Kt is the motor torque constant, Ra is the motor winding resistance, Fd is the propeller drag coefcient, and m is the fuselage mass. In R(s), the system is approximated as rst-order lag with the dead time. L and the time constant of R(s) are determined in experiments. The electrical time constant of the motor is disregarded. V. V ERIFICATION OF ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY USE OF
SIMULATOR

We developed a dynamic simulator for the purpose of simulating the quad rotor tail-sitter ight and researching electrical power consumption in the ight. The simulator was developed with MATLAB/Simulink. Specication of the simulated UAV is shown in Table I.
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Fig. 6.

Simulation of vertical to horizontal ight transition.

Fig. 7.

Simulation result of total thrust.

Fig. 8.

Simulation result of altitude.

Fig. 9.

Simulation result of Euler angle. TABLE I

Fig. 10.

Simulation result of X-direction velocity.

S PECIFICATION OF THE SIMULATED UAV. Weight Airfoil Span Wing area Propeller diameter Propeller pitch 1.0 [kg] NACA0010 0.99 [m] 0.2772 [m2 ] 0.2034 [m] 0.1524 [m]

and the altitude is 0 [m]. In the second step, the UAV switches from hovering ight to level ight in 10 seconds. Reference states are that the angle of attack is 15 [ ], the roll angle is 0 [ ], the yaw angle is 0 [ ] and the altitude is 0 [m] B. Simulation Result The simulated results are shown in Figs. 6 10. Fig. 7 shows the change of total thrust, Fig. 8 shows the altitude change, Fig. 9 shows the attitude change, Fig. 10 shows the X-direction velocity change. Where , and are ZYX Euler angles (yaw, pitch and roll, respectively) . 1) Energy Consumption: Fig. 7 indicates that the total thrust decreases from 9.6 [N] to 2.9 [N] as the UAV switches from hovering ight to level ight. We calculate electrical power consumption in the level ight and hovering ight. The electrical power consumption of hovering ight is 261.1 [W] and level ight is 126.62 [W]. The electrical power consumption of level ight is about half compared with that of hovering ight.
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A. Simulation Condition We study the effectiveness for energy consumption of the xed-wing with simulator. We simulate hovering ight, level ight and transitional ight. The UAV hovers for 10 seconds, and it transfers from hovering ight to level ight. Simulation is made up of two steps. In the rst step, the UAV hovers for 10 seconds while maintaining initial attitude and altitude. The initial condition is that the roll angle is 0 [ ], the pitch angle is 0 [ ], the yaw angle is 0 [ ], the thrust is 0 [N], the ight speed is 0 [m/s]

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TABLE II F LIGHT TIME AND FLIGHT RANGE . 4 roter helicopter 4 rotor tail-sitter Flight time 4.9 [min] 11.6 [min] Flight range 1790 [m] 5520 [m]

The simulation results show that the additional xed-wing improves energy consumption in level ight. 2) Attitude and Altitude Control: Fig. 8 shows that the UAV maintains almost constant altitude during the simulation. In addition, Fig. 9 shows that torque generated by changes in pitch angle is cancelled by controller. Hence, Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 show that the attitude and altitude of UAV are well controlled simultaneously during the ight. Additionally, the propulsion units obtain enough excess thrust for attitude control in the level ight. C. Comparison of Flight Range We make a comparison of the ight range between a quad rotor helicopter and our quad rotor tail-sitter. The quad rotor helicopter is treated as the quad rotor tailsitter without the xed-wing. We assume that the weight is 0.9 [kg], the attack angle is 20 [<#, the ight speed is 6.1 [m/s]. And on the one hand, our UAV attack angle is 15 [<#, the ight speed is 8.0 [m/s]. These attack angles are optimal angle for long distance ight. We calculate the ight range and the ight time in certain situations using same battery. The results are shown in Table II. The ight range of the quad rotor tail-sitter is three times longer than that of the quad rotor helicopter. Hence, longdistance ight performance of the quad rotor tail-sitter UAV have substantially-improved compared with a quad rotor helicopter. VI. S YSTEM C ONFIGURATION A. Airframe At rst, a main wing and body frame are designed. The main wing span is 0.99 [m], the chord is 0.28 [m], the taper ratio 0.6, and the weight is 0.11 [kg], the material is EPP (Expanded Polypro-Pylene). The main wing is part of commercially available R/C airplane. The body frame material is aluminum light alloy. Distance from the body center to motor is 0.4 [m], the weight is 0.20 [kg]. B. Propulsion Unit There are three important integrants of design propulsion unit. The rst important requirement in propulsion unit design is generating sufcient thrust for hover. On the other hand, since an extra strong propulsion unit is massive and it behaves as an unnecessary payload in level ight, the propulsion unit must be as light as possible while keeping thrust to hover. The second important factor is the level-ight cruising speed. In general, performance at high-speed level ight and energy efciency at hovering ight are conicting. Hence,

Fig. 11.

Thrust and power.

an actual mission must be considered in the design of the propulsion unit. The third important factor is the excess thrust. The quad rotor tail-sitter UAV does not have a control surface. Hence, propulsion unit must output required thrust for the level ight and required torque for attitude control. An electric motor and a xed pitch propeller for R/C models are used as propulsion unit in this work. The propeller diameter is 0.205 [m] and the propeller pitch is 0.152 [m]. We selected the motor and the propeller of which the static thrust amounting to 200 [%] of the fuselage weight at a continuous maximum motor load. The measurement results of actual static thrust are plotted in Fig. 11. A lithium polymer battery is mounted on the UAV, which produces output power as plotted in Fig. 11. The battery capacity is 2100 [mAh], the voltage rating is 11.1 [V] and the weight is 0.16 [kg]. The calculated maximum cruising speed of the UAV is about 13 [m/s]. C. Sensors A conguration diagram of the electronic system is shown in Fig. 12. A setup of equipments on the fuselage is shown in Fig. 13. A commercially available attitude sensor module (Microstrain Co., 3DM-GX1) is employed. In addition to the attitude, three-axis angular velocity and acceleration are obtained from this module. The sensors datasheet gives its attitude angle accuracy as 2 [ ]. An Ultrasonic distance sensor measures altitude from ground. Resolution of the ultrasonic distance sensor is 0.025 [m]. The ultrasonic sensor range is 6.45 [m]. A global positioning system (GPS) receiver module (Garmin Co., GPS 18-5Hz) which incorporates an antenna and an arithmetic chip outputs absolute position on the earth and velocity of three axes. This GPS module is point positioning type, and its accuracy described in the datasheet is several meters. D. Computers and Other Devices The main computer of the UAV is a commercially available microcomputer board (Alpha Project Co., STK-7125) which has an SH2 microcomputer made by Renesas Technology Co. This computer calculates control input based on
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Fig. 12.

On-board electronics system. Fig. 14. An overview of a quad rotor tail-sitter UAV. TABLE III S PECIFICATION OF THE 4 ROTOR TAIL - SITTER UAV. Weight Power weight Payload Flight range Flight time(hover) Flight time(level ight) 1.20 [kg] 1.9 0.91 [kg] 5090 [m] 5.8 [min] 10.6 [min]

R EFERENCES
[1] W. E. Green, P. Y. Oh:Autonomous Hovering of a Fixed-Wing Micro Air Vehicle, IEEE International Conference of Robotics and Automation, Orlando, May 2006. [2] H. Stone, G. Clarke: Optimization of Transition Maneuvers for a Tail-Sitter Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV), Australian International Aerospace Congress, p. 105, 2001. [3] T. Cord, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB: SkyTote Advanced Cargo Delivery System, AIAA International Air and Space Symposium and Exposition: The Next 100 Years, AIAA2003-2753, 2003. [4] Z. Yu, K. Nonami: Development of 3D Vision Enabled Smallscale Autonomous Helicopter, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems October, Beijing, 2006. [5] M. Valenti, B. Bethke, D. Dale, A. Frank: The MIT Indoor MultiVehicle Flight Testbed, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Rome, April, 2007. [6] S. Bouabdallah, R. Siegwart: Backstepping and Sliding-mode Techniques Applied to an Indoor Micro Quadrotor, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Barcelona, April 2005. [7] M. J. Grimble: Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines, Springer, 2005. [8] L. A. Young, E. W. Aiken, J. L. Johnson, R. Demblewski : New Concepts and Perspectives on Micro-Rotorcraft and Small Autonomous Rotary-Wing Vehicles, Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, 2002. [9] T. A. Yechout <#<) Introduction to Aircraft Flight Mechanics: Performance, Static Stability, Dynamic Stability, and Classical Feedback <#<& AIAA Education Series <#<& 2003 <#< [10] Japan Aeronautical Engineees Association <#<) Propeller, JAEA, 1959, (in Japanese) <#< [11] Daniel P. Raymer <#<) AIRCRAFT DESIGN: A Conceptual Approach, AIAA, 2006.

Fig. 13.

A side view and a front view of UAV.

each sensor data, and sends command signals to 4 motors. Flight data and other information are recorded on a micro-SD card for postexperiment analysis. The main computer receives commands from an R/C transmitter through an R/C receiver, but is not used in control calculation. A R/C transmitter is mainly used by operator to switch to manual control mode if problems occur. E. Airframe Design Results An overview of the proposed quad rotor tail-sitter UAV is shown in Fig. 14. The airframe length as the basis for landing condition is 0.8 [m], the width is 0.99 [m] and the overall height is 0.28 [m]. Calculated specication of the quad rotor tail-sitter UAV is shown in Table III. Motor mounting parts increased total weight about 0.2 [kg]. Hence, ight range and ight time decreased than simulation results. VII. C ONCLUSIONS In this paper, we developed a new quad rotor tail-sitter VTOL UAV attempt to improve energy efciency. Three dimensional UAV simulator was developed to evaluate the advantage in energy efciency of the proposed UAV. This method gave good results in simulations. The electrical power consumption of level ight is about half compared with that of hovering ight. It is clear from simulation results that the quad rotor tail-sitter that can y three times the distance of the quad rotor helicopter. We will soon conduct a ight experiment.

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