Development of Practical Tiltrotor UAV

Abstract

A Practical Tiltrotor UAV (PTUAV) has been developed and flight tests are under way. The PTUAV was motivated to pursue low cost and high performance while the full-scale tiltrotor UAV development experience was reflected. The PTUAV was targeted to develop a UAV system which has capabilities of VTOL and faster-than-helicopter forward speed with practical mission load adjusting the lower cost and weight. Vehicle sizing was performed using simple analytical method and scaling full scale vehicle parameters. The rotor and drive system of PTUAV were designed reflecting the full-scale concept but simple and unique concept was adopted. An ironbird for the rotor-drive-engine was fabricated and tested on the ground to reduce risks in integration and to facilitate measurements and modifications. The air vehicle was designed and fabricated reflecting the ironbird test. The flight control system covering the test from ground to conversion flight was constructed and tested. A tethered test was conducted for the verification of flight control logic in heli-mode flight prior to flight test. Currently flight tests are under way after integration issues were resolved from ground tests with the platform.

Control and flight test of a tilt-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle

“…Considered to be a promising VTOL configuration, the tiltrotor UAV is actively researched in the field of academics and industry due to the controllability and stability in vertical flight. 1 Some large-scale examples of such tilt-rotor UAVs include the Bell Eagle Eye, 2 SMART UAV 3 developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, and the IAI Panther. 4 Moreover, many smaller scale tilt-rotor UAVs have been developed, including FireFLY6, 5 Orange Hawk, 6 TURAC, 7 and TRON 8 shown in Figure 1.…”

The Investigation onL1Adaptive Control of the Tilt-Rotor Aircraft

“…The stability of the system and the boundary of tracking error are strictly proved based on Lyapunov theory. Choi et al [8] divide the nacelle angle into 90-60 degrees for helicopter mode, 60-30 degrees for conversion mode, and 30-0 degrees for airplane mode in the flight control system of unmanned tilt-rotor aircraft. The way of control scheduling is used, which is easy to be implemented in engineering.…”