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Design and Tune Controller for VTOL UAV

This series of examples shows you have to design and tune a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) UAV using a reference application template as a MATLAB® Project. A VTOL UAV is an UAV that has both fixed wings and multirotors. The multirotors enable the UAV to take off and land in areas without a runway and transition to fixed-wing flight for faster movement. When designing the controller there are three flight configurations that you must tune:

  • Hover Configuration — The UAV actuates the rotors facing up to hover.

  • Transition Configuration — The UAV rotates the angle of the rotors toward the front of the VTOL UAV to act as propellers to transition into fixed-wing flight.

  • Fixed-Wing Configuration — The UAV uses the rotors as propellers and uses the ailerons of the wings to turn and brake.

The process of customizing and tuning a VTOL controller consists of these steps:

  1. Customize VTOL Configuration

  2. Tune Control Design for UAV in Hover.

  3. Multiloop Control Design for UAV in Fixed Wing Flight

  4. Tune Control Design for UAV in Transition.

Then you can use Unreal Engine® to visualize the VTOL UAV mission. See Visualize VTOL Flight Mission Over Urban Environment for more information.

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