Flight Testing of the T-Wing Tail-Sitter Unmanned Air Vehicle

Since October 2005, the T-wing tail-sitter unmanned air vehicle has undergone an extensive program of flight tests, resulting in a total of more than 50 flights, many under autonomous control from takeoff to landing. Starting in August 2006, free flights with conversion between vertical and horizontal flight modes have also been undertaken. Although the latter flights have required some guidance-level ground-pilot input, significant portions of them were performed in autonomous mode, including the transitions between horizontal and vertical flight. This paper considers the overall control architecture of the vehicle, including the different control modes that the vehicle was flown under during the recent series of tests. Although the individual controllers for each flight mode are unremarkable in themselves, it is notable that the aggregate system allows the vehicle to fly throughout its entire flight envelope, which is considerably broader than that of conventional fixed- or rotary-wing vehicles. The performance of the controllers for the different flight modes will also be considered, with a particular focus on hover dispersion results, in differing wind conditions. The majority of these flights were performed on a tether test rig during autonomous control development, to ensure vehicle safety with minimal impact on vehicle dynamics. The demonstration of autonomous flight under the constraints imposed by the tether system in winds up to 18 kt is a significant achievement Results from the more recent horizontal flight tests with conversions between vertical and horizontal flight are also presented. Most important, these results confirm the basic feasibility of tail-sitter vehicles that use control surfaces submerged in propeller wash for vertical flight control.