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ABSTRACT
Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) capable air vehicles such as quadcopters are being considered for a vast array
of missions requiring longer endurance in hover, faster travel times, and higher payload capacities. For this reason,
hybrid air vehicles that incorporate the design features of rotorcraft and fixed wing vehicles appear to be promising
candidates for these missions. One such hybrid vehicle, the quadrotor biplane, has been explored for package delivery
capability. This vehicle configuration has two wings placed perpendicular and below four proprotors in a biplane
configuration. The vehicle uses conventional quadrotor control methodology for flight control in both hover and
froward flight mode. It enters hover in tail-sitter configuration and utilizes differential thrust vectors to pitch forward
into forward flight configuration. Using differential RPM in place of conventional control surfaces greatly reduces
mechanical complexity. The vehicle design and package delivery functionality have been validated experimentally, in
both hover and forward flight, with a test vehicle that has a gross takeoff weight (GTOW) of 3.76 kg and a 0.45 kg
payload capacity. To characterize the flight performance of this vehicle design during its transition between the two
flight modes, a comprehensive sensor suite paired with a flight data recorder system were designed and incorporated
into the vehicle. Motor RPM was measured with hall effect sensors, while a combined voltage and current sensor
measures the power consumption from the main battery. A barometric pressure, temperature, and altitude sensor was
integrated to determine the atmospheric conditions. Lastly, a custom 2-D flow probe designed in-house has been
implemented to measure airspeed and angle of attack of the fuselage body relative to the oncoming wind. In forward
flight, the vehicle was flown with no payload and was shown to require 138 W, 68% less power than the 430 W needed
in hover. This efficiency gain occurred when the vehicle pitched to 55.8◦ from vertical, with no payload, while flying
at 7.31 m/s with respect to the wind. Another observation made from flight data in hover indicates that increasing the
size of the payload from 0 to 1lb (empty to full) increases the amount of power required by 18%.
NOTATION INTRODUCTION
α, angle of attack The performance of Micro and Unmanned Air Vehicles
CD , Coefficient of Drag (MAVs/UAVs) are advancing every day, with new applica-
CL , Coefficient of Lift tions that require larger range, better payload fraction, and
Kv, motor velocity constant faster transit speed while retaining VTOL capability. Many
mAh, milliamp-hours unique hybrid concepts have been developed to combine the
P, electrical power performance advantages of rotary-wing and fixed-wing vehi-
ρ, air density cles. Researchers have investigated a number of these hybrid
CL = ρV2L2 A designs thoroughly, such as tail-sitters, tilt-rotors and tilt-wing
CD = 2D vehicles (Refs. 1–5). Hybrid designs such as the tilt-rotor,
ρV 2 A
tilt-wing, and fan-in-wing configurations possess the opera-
Presented at the 7th AHS Technical Meeting on VTOL Un- tional advantage of maintaining vehicle fuselage orientation
manned Aircraft Systems and Autonomy, Mesa, AZ January in both VTOL and forward flight modes. This advantage
2017. Copyright
c 2017 by the American Helicopter Society comes at a cost, as these designs incur a weight penalty due
International, Inc. All rights reserved. to the mechanisms needed to actuate their rotors/wings. Tail-
1
sitter vehicles present an appealing alternative because they gains seen in the smaller vehicle could scale up. This paper
are mechanically simple. These tail-sitter vehicles can be cat- will discuss the test vehicle’s design and construction, outline
egorized as tilt-body configurations, which typically require the numerous sensors installed to gauge various performance
aerodynamic surfaces in the downwash of their propellers to metrics, and then discuss the results obtained with these sen-
create the pitching moments necessary to change flight orien- sors during hover testing as well as transitional flight testing.
tation. Tail-sitter designs have their own drawbacks, as they
may suffer from low control authority. The quadrotor biplane PACKAGE DELIVERY QUADROTOR
configuration was conceived with the intent to circumvent this
issue. In VTOL mode it functions like a conventional quad-
BIPLANE OVERVIEW
copter. In forward flight cruise mode, its two stationary wings Motivation and Previous Development
generate vertical lift and variations in the motor RPMs pro-
duce differential thrust and control moments. The change in The experimental verification of the quadrotor biplane began
vehicle orientation results in the rotors thrusting in the direc- with a smaller-scale test vehicle. In the previously mentioned
tion of travel and leads to faster, more efficient flight. wind tunnel tests, the interactions between a isolated propeller
At the University of Maryland, there have been numerous and wing were examined to characterize the vehicle’s effi-
studies and experiments focused on the quadrotor biplane con- ciency (Ref. 6). The results of this study, seen in Figure 2,
cept, depicted in Figure 1 (Refs. 6–11). This concept expands show that the power required in forward flight can drop up to
upon a typical quadrotor vehicle, with two wings mounted 1/3 of what is required in hover. Following this validation, the
perpendicular and beneath the quadrotor frame. The vehicle biplane wing airfoil cross section, wing spacing, wing sizing,
sits at rest with the biplane wing trailing edges on the ground and motor placement were all examined to determine their im-
and the rotor thrust vector up. In this configuration, the vehi- pact on performance, thereby contributing to the development
cle is VTOL-capable and by controlling the rotor thrust vec- of an optimal vehicle configuration (Ref. 7).
tors it transitions through wing stall to enter into forward flight
configuration. Initially, the advantages gained from the ve-
hicle configuration were characterized in wind tunnel testing
(Ref. 6). Afterward, a comprehensive study was carried out
to determine the optimum design of the vehicle at the smaller
scale (Ref. 7). Next, an investigation was made into improv-
ing roll control authority through measures such as changing
vehicle geometry, introducing control surfaces on the wings,
and even using variable pitch propellers (Ref. 8).
Vehicle Design
Part Weight(g)
Airfoils, w/out Tape (x2) 174
Airfoil Spar (x2) 87.7
Battery 556
(a) Top View, Hover ESCs (x4) 128
Landing Gear (x4) 72.7
i
MicroRax Cross Assembly 138
ABS Motor Mounts 152
Motors w/ Props (x4) 698
Payload 454
Payload Frame 150
Nose Cone Structure 173
Stabilizers (x2) 48.5
(b) Fron View, Forward Flight Package Delivery Components 128
Carbon Fiber Frame Panel (x4) 177
Fig. 6: Control Moments for (a) Hover and (b) Forward
Electronics Suite 39.0
Flight
Miscellaneous Weight 661
Total Weight 3.76 kg
made in keeping with the initial AirEZ design. A cruise CL Flight Controller
value of 0.6 and a cruise speed of 13.38 m/s were chosen.
From these values, the wing planform area was determined to The microcontroller used onboard the quadrotor biplane is
be 0.26 m2 . The aspect ratio of the wing was set at 4 to keep a state-of-the-art autopilot system developed in-house at the
the vehicle relatively compact with limited penalty in aerody- Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center (Ref. 13). The Enhanced
namic performance (Ref. 7). This led to defining the chord Lightweight Kinematic Autopilot (ELKA-R) board, pictured
length of the wing as 0.254 m and the span as 1.02 m. in Figure 7, is remarkably compact with a total weight of
1.7 grams and a 1 mm thickness. The ELKA board has an
installed Cortex-M4 microprocessor which was chosen for
Another key aspect of the scaled design was the rotor di-
its large memory and high clock speed. The board has an
ameter. For this purpose, the disk loading value of 7.2 kg/m2
integrated MPU-9150 IMU which comes with a 3-axis ac-
was selected (Ref. 9). From this value, the necessary rotor
celerometer, a 3-axis magnetometer, and a 3-axis gyroscope.
blade diameter was found to be 0.39 m. Commercially avail-
There is also a built-in 2.4 GHz wireless transceiver on the
able 15 x 5.5 (0.381 m x 0.127 m) carbon fiber propellers were
ELKA board, and the loop rate of the feedback control sys-
chosen to meet the rotor design requirement. To drive these
tem is 1000Hz (Ref. 13). The ELKA board can be powered
rotors, four Turnigy Multistar 4114 brushless motors were se-
by a 3.7V LiPo battery. Because the vehicle experiences large
lected based on their 320 Kv rating. The Kv rating is the ratio
changes in pitch angle when it transitions, A quaternion-based
of the unloaded RPM to the peak voltage of said motor, and
feedback controller was implemented. The control system de-
as such low Kv is desirable for motors that will be spinning
velopment and implementation are described in more detail
large propellers. To match the current draw expected from the
in (Ref. 14).
four motors during operation, the Turnigy 5000 mAh 4S 30C
Lithium Polymer (LiPo) Battery Pack with a 14.8V discharge
was chosen. The LiPo pack is rated for a constant discharge of
30C, meaning that this battery can sustain a constant current
discharge of up to 150 amps. The power coming from the bat-
tery to the motors is regulated by electronic speed controllers.
These take input from the micro-processor and regulate the
voltage sent to each motor to match the pilots throttle com-
mands. Turnigy Multistar 30A Slim V2 ECSs were selected
based on their rating of 30A and small profile.
Sensors
Flow Probe
8
Fig. 15: Flight Performance Measurements of (1) Motor RPM, (2) Pitch, (3) Power Consumed, and (4) Airspeed During
Transition Flight, with 3 Transitions from Hover to Fixed Wing Mode Indicated in Green
Fig. 16: Detailed View of First Transition to Fixed Wing Mode with (1) Power, (2) Airspeed, and (3) Pitch Indicated at
Time of Minimum Power
9
(a) Diagram of Vehicle’s Attitude Change with Plots Showing (1)
Power vs. Pitch and (2) Airspeed vs. Pitch (b) Power vs. Airspeed
Fig. 17: Comparing Performance Metrics for First Transition to Fixed Wing Mode
motor to determine individual motor RPM. And finally, a cus- ing of the package delivery vehicle and wind tunnel data col-
tom orthogonal 2-D flow probe was integrated to provide both lected for the smaller scale vehicle.
airspeed and vehicle angle of attack (α).
Future Work
Flight data was collected to examine two facets of the ve-
hicle: performance with varying payload, and performance Continued testing will be carried out to further characterize
during the transition to forward flight. Hover tests were con- the vehicle’s performance, namely at higher pitch-angles and
ducted with no payload, 1/2 lb payload, and 1 lb payload, and forward flight speeds, with payloads on board, and in windy
it was found that 18% more power is required when adding environments to examine stability. Another avenue of future
the full payload to the vehicle compared to when it is empty. work will involve implementation of the flight sensors dis-
Another important conclusion to be drawn from the hover cussed in this paper onto a new quadrotor biplane vehicle
test data is the strong correlation shown between numerous with variable pitch propellers. This will allow the stability
vehicle functions, such as the pilot throttle commands being and forward flight speed/efficiency of the vehicle with fixed
matched closely by the vehicle’s RPM, as detected by the hall pitch propellers to be compared with a vehicle equipped with
effect sensors, and the power consumption being detected by variable pitch propellers. Lastly, there is an opportunity for
the voltage and current sensor. Data was then collected from the on board flight data sensor suite developed for this paper
the vehicle during a full flight test outdoors. The most im- to be applied in a more general fashion to other experimental
portant trend observed in the data is that power consistently air vehicles to better help researchers characterize their per-
decreases with the increased airspeed experienced when the formance.
vehicle pitched down. It was observed that the power dropped
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
from 430 W to 137.8 W after pitching down from 0◦ to 55.8◦
and reaching an airspeed of 7.3 m/s. Similar trends were ob- The authors wish to acknowledge Dr. Omri Rand, Professor
served between power vs. airspeed data obtained in flight test- of Aerospace at Technion University, Haifa, Israel, and the
10
Israel Ministry of Defense for their support of this research. 10 Hrishikeshavan, V. and Chopra, I., “High-Speed Quad-
Rotor Biplane Micro Air Vehicle for Multiple-Role Missions,”
AUTHOR CONTACT INFORMATION American Helicopter Society 4th Asian-Australian Rotorcraft
Forum, Bangalore, India, November 2015.
Brandyn Phillips, bphill@terpmail.umd.edu 11 Phillips,
Dr. Vikram Hrishikeshavan, vikramh@umd.edu B., Hrishikeshavan, V., Rand, O., and Chopra, I.,
Dr. Derrick Yeo, derrickwyeo@gmail.com “Design and Development of a Scaled Quadorotor Biplane
Dr. Inderjit Chopra, chopra@umd.edu with Variable Pitch Proprotors for Rapid Paylaod Delivery,”
American Helicopter Society 72nd Annual Forum, West Palm
Beach, FL, May 2016.
12 Trollinger,
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11