Design, Modeling and Hybrid Control of a QuadPlane
Akshay Mathur, Ella Atkins
Abstract
View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-0374.vid This paper describes the design, initial testing, modeling, and control of a hybrid quadrotor-fixed-wing unmanned aircraft system (UAS) prototype targeting future urban air mobility (UAM) applications. The prototype has a traditional aircraft wing, tail, and puller motor along with four vertical thrust motors supporting a quadrotor flight mode. Vehicle dynamics are defined for hover, cruise and transition flight. Control laws are defined for the different modes of operation to achieve smooth reference trajectory tracking. A hybrid systems model is defined. Step responses, mode transition and full-envelope flight sequences analyze "QuadPlane" performance in Matlab simulation.