Tilt-wing UAV with independent wing control mechanism for flight maneuvers

Abstract

A tri-copter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with independently tilted main wings for various flight maneuvers is presented. In contrast to conventional tilt wing UAVs, it can achieve attitude maneuver by taking the main wings as individual control surfaces. Tilting main wings independently can generate large difference of aerodynamic lift force between the main wings and thus enable agile maneuvers of the UAV. Even though the UAV is a tri-copter, it can compensate the reaction torque created by the tail motor by the independent control of the main wings. Few publications have appeared in the literature, dealing with tri-copter UAV with independently tilted main wings for flight maneuvers. Equations of motion of the UAV are established via the Newton-Euler formulation and effect of independent wing control is examined with verification of agile roll operation. The PID/PI controller with control allocation for control is explained and the flight performance is validated in the flight experiments. Results of simulations with model-based linear quadratic regulator (LQR) and sliding mode control (SMC), machine learning-based deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) are presented to improve flight stability in roll operation of the UAV. With the flight simulator, flight maneuverability in large scale airplane are validated with presenting that the roll rate of independent control of main wings is 80% larger than that of the conventional UAV with ailerons as control surfaces.