Transition flight control of the quad-tilting rotor convertible MAV

This paper presents a model of a particular class of a convertible MAV with fixed wings. This vehicle can operate as a helicopter as well as a conventional airplane, i.e. the aircraft is able to switch their flight configuration from hover to level flight and vice versa by means of a transition maneuver. The paper focuses on finding a controller capable of performing such transition via the tilting of their four rotors. The altitude should remain on a predefined value throughout the transition stage. For this purpose a nonlinear control strategy based on saturations and Lyapunov design is given. The use of this control law enables to make the transition maneuver while maintaining the aircraft in flight. Numerical results are presented, showing the effectiveness of the proposed methodology to deal with the transition stage.