Trajectory tracking control for hovering and acceleration maneuver of Quad Tilt Rotor UAV

The ability to transition between vertical and horizontal flight is of great importance to convertible unmanned aerial vehicles. A novel convertible UAV-a Quad Tilt Rotor UAV (QTR UAV) was designed, which could operate as a quad rotor as well as an airplane by means of transition maneuver. This paper focuses on the trajectory tracking control for the hovering mode and acceleration maneuver which is the basis for the transition maneuver. First, a prototype QTR UAV was constructed to prove the concept and validate the proposed layout, which demonstrated good stability and control characteristics under manual control. Then dynamic model for full flight profile was constructed according to the first principle. A control strategy was scheduled for the transition maneuver. A nonlinear controller was designed based on dynamic inversion method. The effectiveness of the proposed control methodology was shown through numerical simulations.