Novel hybrid electric motor glider-quadrotor MAV for in-flight/V-STOL launching

This work presents a novel lightweight electric UAV that features fixed-wing motor glider aircraft and quadrotor helicopter capabilities. This paper presents the hybrid concept, design, evaluation and operation of a MAV (Mini Aerial Vehicle) named Sharky, fully designed and crafted by ART (Aerial Robots Team), which may be a versatile flying robot to broaden the scope of a great number of autonomous/tele-operated missions. To illustrate, Sharky may be potentially useful on precise positioning of sensors/equipment at any point in water/ground/air areas. The MAV may aid atmospheric sensing, water sample collecting, precise positioning of sensor for agriculture, surveillance of restricted/non-structured areas, such as post-disaster sites. The aircraft is morphologically and aerodynamically shaped to perform well defined and specific features, e.g., in-flight stable launching from a carrier, gliding ability, powered flight (motor-glider), transition between glider and quadrotor (and vice versa) and base level launching either as a quadrotor or a motor glider. Sharky transition (glider/quadrotor/glider) may be achieved at anytime during the mission. The aircraft center of mass is slightly shifted to offer gliding/motor gliding stability. Because it is a quadrotor, Sharky may either work as an inverted pendulum problem. Thus, translations and rotations are easily achieved using part of the potential energy from center of mass unbalance. Still, Sharky is easily able to return back to glider/motor glider configuration by using the same principle. That helps minimizing brushless motors usage and, therefore, battery consumption. Dynamic models are presented and analyzed. Sharky stability and controllability are first evaluated in VLM/Panels software. Secondly, wind tunnel analysis are run.