Hover, Transition, and Level Flight Control Design for a Single-Propeller Indoor Airplane

This paper presents vehicle models and test flight results for an autonomous fixed-wing aircraft with the capability to take off, hover, transition to and from level-flight, and perch on a vertical landing platform. These maneuvers are all demonstrated in the highly space constrained environment of the Real-time indoor Autonomous Vehicle test ENvironment (RAVEN) at MIT. RAVEN promotes the rapid prototyping of UAV planning and control technologies by allowing the use of unmodified commercially available model aircraft for autonomous flight. Experimental results of several hover tests, transition maneuvers, and perch landings are presented. By enabling a fixed-wing UAV to achieve these feats, we demonstrate that the desirable speed and range performance of an autonomous fixed-wing aircraft in level flight can be complimented by hover capabilities that are typically limited to rotary-wing vehicles. This combination has the potential to significantly ease support and maintenance of operational autonomous vehicles.