Development of VTOL Drone for Stable Transit Flight

Abstract

Fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicles typically have longer running (flight) time than multicopers, but runways are needed. Because it is difficult to expect a wide runway in the city area, the great need is there to develop a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) type fixed-wing UAV that does not require any runway. In addition, our goal was to develop a VTOL plane that contains a stable transit flight characteristic. To achieve this goal, we have designed and developed a test plane and the flight parameters have been extensively tested. For the airframe design, the carbon-bar method was selected for vertical takeoff and landing, and the 11-way method was adopted through dynamics analysis. We assembled the airframe and made a prototype using the Pixhawk flight computer. The developed VTOL plane shows a very smooth transition flight. It is expected that the VOTL UAV will be widely used in the city area in the future for various purposes, such as cargo delivery and emergency medical supply delivery.