Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Progress in Aerospace Sciences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paerosci

A survey of hybrid Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Adnan S. Saeed a, *, Ahmad Bani Younes b, Chenxiao Cai c, Guowei Cai d
a
Aerospace Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
b
Aerospace Engineering, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA
c
School of Automation, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, PR China
d
Robotics Institute, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This article presents a comprehensive overview on the recent advances of miniature hybrid Unmanned Aerial
Hybrid UAVs Vehicles (UAVs). For now, two conventional types, i.e., fixed-wing UAV and Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL)
Platform design UAV, dominate the miniature UAVs. Each type has its own inherent limitations on flexibility, payload, flight
Dynamic modeling range, cruising speed, takeoff and landing requirements and endurance. Enhanced popularity and interest are
Flight control recently gained by the newer type, named hybrid UAV, that integrates the beneficial features of both conventional
Fixed wing VTOL
ones. In this survey paper, a systematic categorization method for the hybrid UAV's platform designs is intro-
Tailsitter
duced, first presenting the technical features and representative examples. Next, the hybrid UAV's flight dynamics
model and flight control strategies are explained addressing several representative modeling and control work. In
addition, key observations, existing challenges and conclusive remarks based on the conducted review are dis-
cussed accordingly.

1. Introduction
During the last several decades, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
have experienced a tremendous development and gained fast-growing
popularity worldwide. Nowadays, UAVs are extensively used in various
critical military and defence applications such as reconnaissance, sur-
veillance, and security reinforcement. According to [1,2], the total sector
sales of the global military UAV market is expected to increase by more
than 60% between 2011 and 2020.
Nevertheless, UAVs applications are not limited to military and
defence: the market of civilian UAVs has recently grown rapidly,
covering a wide range of areas such as traffic surveillance, disaster
management, infrastructure inspection, law enforcement, and vegetarian
monitoring. Many studies (see, e.g. [1,3,4]) predict that there is a high
chance that the utilization of civilian UAVs will eventually dwarf the
military demand in the near future. The promising future and unlimited
potential of UAVs have also ignited strong interest in academia:
numerous research works have been carried out on UAVs that are either
commercially available or customized and a large amount of algorithms
and techniques has been developed aiming at enhancing the UAVs' in-
telligence in guidance, navigation, and control.
UAV platforms are currently dominated by two types: fixed-wing UAV
and rotorcraft UAV. Each type has advantages but exhibits inherent
limitations. The fixed-wing UAV generally advances in cruising speed,
payload capacity, flight range, and endurance. However, it requires
runways or launching/recovery equipment with special design for reli-
able takeoff and landing. In addition, it is not applicable to missions
requiring ultra low flight speed or confined environment. On the other
hand, the rotorcraft UAV has much looser requirements on takeoff and
landing spots. It also features the unique hovering capability, which
brings much enhanced versatility in executing a mission. However, the
speed and endurance limit significantly trunks the rotorcraft UAV's
capability in missions requiring wide-range coverage or long endurance.
As such, a newly emerging and promising trend of UAV design, partic-
ularly for miniature UAVs, is to design an aerial system that integrates the
advantages of both, operates in a wider envelope (i.e., vertical takeoff,
transition, cruise, and vertical landing), and contributes to a much
broader range of applications. Inspired by such demanding need, the
hybrid UAV, or fixed-wing Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) UAV in
other words, is born.
Indeed, integrating the advantages of fixed-wing and rotary aircraft
has long been a concern for the aerospace and aviation industries. Over
the years, there have been quite a number of attempts to build manned
hybrid aircraft. Several representative examples are shown in Fig. 1,

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: adnan.saeed@kustar.ac.ae (A.S. Saeed).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paerosci.2018.03.007
Received 27 December 2017; Received in revised form 17 March 2018; Accepted 20 March 2018
Available online 30 March 2018
0376-0421/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A.S. Saeed et al. Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105

recent advances of the miniature hybrid UAVs. According to our

List of acronyms knowledge, remarkable progress has been mainly achieved in three as-
pects: platform design, flight dynamics modeling, and flight control.
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Correspondingly, the remaining content of this paper is organized as
VTOL Vertical Takeoff and Landing follows: Section 2 addresses the platform design, in which a systematic
LTV Ling-Temco-Vought categorization method for the hybrid UAVs is proposed and the technical
RC Radio-Controlled features as well as the representative hybrid UAV platforms for each type
GL Greased Lightning are detailed. In Section 3, an overview of hybrid UAVs' flight dynamics
QTW Quad Tilt Wing modeling and flight control techniques is presented addressing a
MTT Mono Thrust Transitioning comprehensive analysis of the representative modeling and control
CTT Collective Thrust Transitioning research work. Finally, key observations, existing challenges and key
DTT Differential Thrust Transitioning conclusion remarks are drawn in Section 4. It should be highlighted that
FDCL Flight Dynamics and Control Laboratory the scope of this paper is particularly limited to the miniature hybrid
PID Proportional-Integral-Derivative UAVs. Thus, the word ”miniature” will be omitted in the remaining
LQR Linear Quadratic Regulator contents.
PD Proportional-Derivative
P Proportional 2. Platform design
PI Proportional-Integral
SDRE State Dependent Riccati Equation Generally, hybrid UAVs are categorized into two types: convertiplane
and tail-sitter. A convertiplane maintains its airframe orientation in all
flight modes, and certain transition or switching mechanisms are
employed to achieve mode transfer. On the other hand, a tail-sitter is an
including: Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey [5,16], Vertol VZ-2 [6,17], Sikorsky
aircraft that takes off and lands vertically on its tail, and the entire
X-wing [7,18], Harrier GR7 [8,19], Convair XFY-1 [9,20], Lockheed
airframe needs to tilt to accomplish cruise flight. As shown in Fig. 2, both
XFV-1 [10,21], Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) XC-142 [11,22], and Canadair
are further categorized into a few sub-types, depending on the specific
CL-84 [12,23]. Some of them did achieve remarkable success and a few
transition mechanisms and airframe configurations. In what follows of
manned hybrid aircraft such as Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey and Harrier GR7
Section 2, we will address all subtypes, analyze their design features,
are still in service. Within the last five years, the hybrid aircraft design
discuss the advantages and disadvantages of every subtype, and intro-
concept has gained increasing popularity in miniature UAV development,
duce representative examples.
given 1) the increasing maturity of miniature UAV design and
manufacturing, 2) the steady cost reduction of miniature UAV develop-
ment, and 3) the saturation of the conventional miniature fixed-wing and 2.1. Convertiplane
rotary UAVs. As a result, a number of pioneer research work has been
documented in literature, and a few designs such as BirdsEyeView A variety of mechanisms have been implemented in developing the
FireFLY6 [13], X PlusOne [14] and MartinUAV V-Bat [15] have been convertiplane UAVs to achieve the transition between vertical flight and
commercialized successfully. For now, the hybrid UAV development is cruise flight. In general, the convertiplane UAVs are classified into four
still in its infancy, and there is a huge space for the hybrid UAVs to sub-types: 1) tilt-rotor, 2) tilt-wing, 3) rotor-wing, and 4) dual-systems.
become more mature in terms of many critical perspectives such as
design philosophy, dynamics modeling, control, guidance, navigation, 2.1.1. Tilt-rotor
and robustness. Nevertheless, given their rapidly growing popularity, it is A tilt-rotor UAV has multiple rotors mounted on the tilting shafts or
believed that the hybrid UAVs will have a bright future and promptly nacelles. During the hover-to-cruise transition, partial or all rotors tilt
form an essential pillar of the UAV market. towards flight direction to provide the aircraft forward speed until the
In this paper, we intend to provide a comprehensive overview on the cruise flight is achieved. Since the birth of the first tilt-rotor UAV (i.e.,

Fig. 1. Examples of manned hybrid aircraft.

92
A.S. Saeed et al.
Fig. 2. Categorization of miniature hybrid UAVs.
Fig. 3. Representative examples of bi-rotor convertiplane UAVs.
Bell Eagle Eye [16]) in 1993, the tilt-rotor design concept has nested a
number of aerospace enterprises and research institutes, and as a result
tens of tilt-rotor UAVs have been developed and flight-tested. Accord-
ingly, the tilt-rotor UAVs are further categorized into three branches: 1)
bi-rotor, 2) tri-rotor, and 3) quad-rotor, which will be all detailed in what
follows. In the description of each branch, three main aspects will be
addressed: 1) main feature(s), 2) operation principle, and 3) represen-
tative design cases.
A bi-rotor convertiplane UAV employs two tilting rotors to provide lift
in hover and thrust in cruise. When operating in the cruise mode, a bi-
rotor convertiplane works very similarly to a conventional fixed-wing
aircraft (i.e., thrust is provided by rotors, and various control surfaces
are used to achieve the roll, pitch and yaw motions). On the other hand,
when operating in the vertical mode, pitch is generated by the forward
longitudinal cyclic pitch produced by the forward tilting of the proprotor
discs. Moreover, the availability of nacelle lateral tilting and collective
and cyclic pitch are pretty important for generating yaw and roll motions.
According to our survey, the most dominant rotor configuration for
bi-rotor convertiplane UAVs is that the two rotors are mounted on the
tilting nacelles or shafts that are located on the wing tips. Such design
concept was first introduced in 1993 by the Bell Helicopter Inc., which is
93
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
treated as the pioneer in the field of bi-rotor convertiplane UAVs by
unveiling Bell Eagle Eye UAV shown in Fig. 3 (a) (i.e., a scaled-down,
unmanned version of the manned hybrid aircraft V-22 Osprey shown
in Fig. 1(a)) to the world [24,25,30]. It was later adopted by a number of
small-scale bi-rotor convertiplane UAV prototypes such as the NUAA
tilt-rotor UAV prototype shown in Fig. 3(b) [26]. It is noted that for such
design the two rotors produce constant rolling torques to both wings and
fuselage, resulting in relatively shorter wing span and thicker airfoil. As a
consequence, the aircraft has a relatively poor aerodynamic performance
in terms of aspect ratio and drag.
An alternative bi-rotor convertiplane solution was unveiled in 2011
by AgustaWestland Project Zero shown in Fig. 3(c), which integrates
flying-wing fuselage and twin embed-in-fuselage motor design [27].
Such combination theoretically eases the request on the lift and thrust in
the cruise mode but makes the attitude stabilization in hover more
challenging. Furthermore, the fuselage-rotor interaction effect is a crit-
ical issue for such UAV's operation, particularly in transition stage and
cruise mode. So far, only its basic hovering capacity has been initially
flight-demonstrated in 2013.
There are two small-scale convertiplanes (the Navig8 and the UPAT
UAV shown in Fig. 3) which adopted the bi-rotor design methodology
A.S. Saeed et al.
[28,29]. The Navig8 UAV features an aerodynamical fuselage design that
generates additional lift in cruise flight. The UPAT UAV is built with a
highly simplified mechanical design for initially examining the proposed
low-level control algorithms but shows the emerging interest in the
academia.
Another popular convertiplane design, which is particularly domi-
nant in the small-scale convertiplane UAV market, is the tri-rotor
configuration. In the vertical mode, all three rotors are directed up-
wards and the operation principle is analogous to the Y-configuration
VTOL drones. The transition to cruise mode occurs by tilting one or two
rotors forward to generate thrust and gain airspeed. While in the cruise
mode, the tri-rotor convertiplane UAV works very similarly to a con-
ventional fixed-wing aircraft (i.e., thrust is provided by rotors, and
various control surfaces are used to achieve the roll, pitch and yaw mo-
tions). Tri-rotor convertiplane generally features the following three
advantages: 1) the lift generation requirement on each rotor can be
reduced roughly from 50% to 33% of the total UAV weight, 2) rotor
configuration is geometrically symmetric with respect to the UAV's
center of gravity, which can effectively ease the attitude stabilization of
the tri-rotor convertiplane in hover mode, and 3) the rear rotor is
constantly fixed to the fuselage and thus causes minor additional me-
chanical design complexity. The first world-acknowledged remarkable
success in the tri-rotor convertiplane UAV development is the Panther
UAV shown in Fig. 4(a), which was developed by IAI Inc [24]. It is
currently served for military tactical usage. As the pioneer, Panther UAV
adopts sailplane fuselage and wing design and low-wing configuration,
aiming at desired tradeoff between the flight endurance and versatility.
However, such design is indeed rarely followed by other designers
worldwide for either scientific research or commercialization. Instead,
the combination of tri-rotor and flying-wing fuselage has recently gained
emerging popularity, which is reflected by the fact that three of the four
representative tri-rotor convertiplane UAVs (i.e., Orange Hawk, TURAC
and FireFLY6 shown in Fig. 4) addressed in this survey fall into this line.
Such trend following is mainly caused by three reasons: 1) miniature or
small-scale flying-wing aircraft is low-cost and easily available in the
Radio-Controlled (RC) communities, 2) the enhanced capability of the
low-cost auto-pilot systems (e.g., PixHawk or DJI-NAZA) is sufficient to
handle the hybrid UAV control, and 3) aerodynamically flying-wing
Fig. 4. Representative examples of tri-rotor and quad-rotor convertiplane UAVs.
94
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
design features relatively good payload capacity. For instance, accord-
ing to [24,31–33] the TURAC can approximately carry the same payload
capacity as the IAI Panther with an obvious wing-span reduction. It was
also noted that a few of additional design features have been employed to
improve the performance of the tri-rotor flying-wing convertiplanes. For
instance, in order to simplify the rolling and yawing control in the hover
mode, TURAC adopts a co-axial rear rotor whereas FireFLY6 adopts the
Y-6 (i.e., three co-axial rotors) configuration. Furthermore, aero-
dynamical feature was intended to be optimized by all designers through
selecting appropriate airfoils [34], Computational Fluid Dynamics
(CFD)-analyzing the performance [31,34], and winglet utilization.
The third but relatively rare convertiplane UAV design is the quad-
rotor configuration, which can be further divided into two sub-types:
“ þ ” style and “  ” style. According to our survey, very few hybrid
UAVs were constructed based on quad-rotor configuration, and only two
representative prototypes have been found, that is, Phantom Swift
developed by Boeing and Quantum Tron developed by Quantum Systems
[35,36] shown in Fig. 4. The former mainly features “ þ ” style rotor
configuration and tilting shrouded rotors mounted on the wing tips for
thrust generation during cruise flight. In the hover mode, Phantom Swift
generally operates as a “ þ ” style quadcopter with the enhanced yawing
controllability provided by the tilting rotors. The Quantum Tron in-
tegrates the “  ” style quad-rotor configuration, sailplane aircraft design,
and retractable rotor blades. During hover, the Quantum Tron works as a
“  ” style quadcopter while in cruise flight mode, the front two rotors tilt
forward for thrust generation, and the two rear rotors are not in usage.
Furthermore, the blades of rear rotors are naturally retracted to minimize
the drag caused for cruising. Currently, the critically challenging issue for
both aforementioned prototypes is the transition of techniques developed
for the miniature scale demonstrators to the full-scale counterparts.
2.1.2. Tilt-wing
The primary feature of the tilt-wing convertiplane is that partial or the
entire wing is required to be tilted together with the rotors during flight-
mode transition. The tilt-wing convertiplane design can be traced back to
the period 1957 to 1965, when Boeing Vertol pioneered this area by
developing a manned tilt-wing aircraft named Vertol VZ-2 shown in
Fig. 1(b) [6]. Compared with the tilt-rotor, a tilt-wing convertiplane
A.S. Saeed et al.
generally features more complicated and sophisticated design in
on-board components such as tilting drive train. Furthermore, in
low-speed operation (i.e., hover, takeoff, and landing), the wings of a
tilt-wing convertiplane need to be directed upwards, which makes the
aircraft more vulnerable to cross wind and thus requires additional effort
in developing control mechanisms to handle the attitude stabilization.
Due to such inherent challenges, the tilt-wing design concept did not
regain sufficient popularity until the year of 2000, when the
manufacturing technology of miniature RC aircraft became more mature
and its potential in the miniature UAV market was gradually dug out by
UAV designers. Over the last decade, tilt-wing convertiplane UAVs have
been researched actively, and a number of representative cases (shown in
Fig. 5) have been found through our survey, including: HARVee [37],
AVIGLE [38–40], Greased Lightning (GL) VTOL Drone [41,48], DHL
parcelcopter [42,43], AT-10 Responder [24], Quad Tilt Wing (QTW)
VTOL UAV [44,45], and SUAVI [46,47]. . Generally, tilt-wing converti-
plane UAVs fall into two main categories: single-wing configuration and
tandem-wing configuration.
Single-wing configuration is treated as the most popular solution to
the miniature tilt-wing convertiplane UAV development, as five of the
aforementioned seven representative examples (i.e., HARVee, AVIGLE,
GL VTOL Drone, AT-10 Responder and DHL parcelcopter) adopt such
concept. HARVee is an early work developed by a young research group
[37]. The aerodynamic performance is relatively coarse, given the two
facts: 1) only two fixed-pitch motors are integrated with a sailplane
aircraft, and 2) the entire wing is required to tilt for realizing the tran-
sition. In hover-mode, the HARVee operates similar to a bi-rotor
convertiplane as explained previously. Additional mechanical design
innovations have been employed by all the subsequent efforts, aiming at
improving the stabilization performance of the tilt-wing convertiplane
UAVs, particularly in hover-mode. More specifically, the designers of the
AT-10 Responder invented a unique tilting mechanism for drag/dis-
turbance reduction; the wing of the AT-10 Responder is separated into
two parts. Only the inner part with the fixed-pitch motors mounted on
the leading edge is able to tilt. As for AVIGLE, another novel mechanism
featuring the integration of variable blade pitch and aileron control on
top of differential wing tilting has been adopted, providing rich freedom
for attitude control in hover mode. On the other hand, GL VTOL Drone
adopts a substantially different control mechanism by employing ten
fixed-pitch rotors (eight are located on the leading edge of the wings and
the remaining two are with the horizontal stabilizers). Consequently, the
attitudes of GL VTOL Drone are well controlled by implementing a
Fig. 5. Representative examples of tilt-wing convertiplane UAVs.
95
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
sophisticated speed-control mechanism of the multiple rotors and
enhancing controllability in case of the malfunction of one or few rotors.
Another very successful example is the DHL parcelcopter which is tar-
geted for parcel delivery in mountainous regions. As previously
mentioned, the hybrid UAVs pave the way for increasing payload ca-
pacity while maintaining high cruise speed and long flight range. DHL
took advantage of this as the latest version 2.2 m wingspan hybrid UAV
(parcelcopter 3.0) is able to carry a payload of 2 kg and have a cruise
speed of 70 km/h with a flight distance of around 8 km and is loaded and
unloaded automatically [42]. Moreover, it has successfully completed
the three-month test and has been logistically integrated into the delivery
chain [43].
Two tandem-wing convertiplane UAVs prototypes shown in Fig. 5(f)
and (g) have been developed by academic institutes as an extension of
their research on routine quad-copter aerial vehicles. Mechanically, both
surveyed tandem-wing convertiplane platforms follow an almost iden-
tical configuration: four fixed-pitch rotors are mounted on the edge of the
tandem wings, and two tilting mechanisms are employed, each of which
is attached to a pair of the tandem wings for collective tilting. During
hover, a tandem-wing convertiplane UAV is operated similar to an “  ”
style quad-copter with the assistance of the on-board attitude stabiliza-
tion system. Differential tilting function to a wing set (front or rear) is not
required and thus can significantly simplify the design of the tilting drive
train. Furthermore, it should be noted that airfoil selection and the
interaction between the front and rear wings are highlighted in all the
documentations related to both UAVs (i.e. [44–47]), which indicates the
critical importance of these two issues for achieving desired flight
performance.
2.1.3. Dual-system
The third type of convertiplane UAVs is referred to as dual-system. It
utilizes two sets of propulsion systems: one contains upward mounted
rotor (or rotors) for vertical operation and another adopts tractors or
pushers for cruise flight. As tilting mechanism is not required for dual-
system convertiplane, such aircraft, compared with the two aforemen-
tioned convertiplanes, features simplified mechanical design and
enhanced reliability. However, during cruise flight, the multiple non-
operational rotors for vertical lift generation cause extra aerodynamic
drag due to their fixed mounting, resulting in additional burden to the
tractors or pushers. Six representative dual-system examples have been
discussed in this section, including: HADA [50], Quadcruiser [51],
Arcturus JUMP [52], Hybrid Quadcopter [53], SLT VTOL UAV [54], and
A.S. Saeed et al.
Fig. 6. Representative examples of dual-system convertiplane UAVs.
TU-150 [55]. These UAVs are illustrated in Fig. 6 for convenient refer-
ence. Based on the number of rotors employed for vertical flight, the
dual-system convertiplane UAVs consist of three sub-types: compound
helicopter (one rotor) as in Ref. [56], bi-rotor dual-system and quad-rotor
dual-system. The operation principle of the compound helicopter is
basically the same as that of the helicopter but has additional wings with
several mounted rotors to allow cruise flight. Further details about the
operation principle can be found in Ref. [56]. Only one of the afore-
mentioned dual-system prototypes (HADA) has adopted this configura-
tion in which it performs as a helicopter for takeoff and the transition
occurs by unfolding the wings and powering up the pusher [50]. The
project is currently being developed by Embention jointly with INTA
(Spanish National Institute of Aerospace Technology) for the employ-
ment of the flight control system [57]. Among all sub-types, the
quad-rotor configuration prevalently dominates dual-system converti-
plane development, given the fact that all the other examples except
TU-150 adopt the quad-copter configuration. Such prevalence is mainly
due to the desired controllability and attitude stability provided by the
“  ” style quad-copter operation in vertical flight mode. Among the four
quad-rotor dual-system UAVs, the Quadcruiser and the Arcturus further
share the same tandem-wing design feature, whereas the Hybrid Quad-
copter and the SLT VTOL UAV adopt conventional fixed-wing fuselage
with either T-tail or V-tail. Several representative dual-system UAVs
demonstrated the flight capacity over the full envelope which indicates
the practicality of quad-rotor dual-system UAVs [52,54,58]. On the other
hand, TU-150 is the only bi-rotor dual-system UAV that has been found in
our survey. Two three-blade rotors are adopted and mounted on the tips
of the wings. For sufficient lift generation, the rotor size is significantly
enlarged. The rotor radius is over 30% of the wing-span based on the
current prototype. For now, the authors have found poor resources on
flight demonstration on TU-150. The feasibility of implementing such
design methodology is still questionable.
2.1.4. Rotor-wing
The fourth type of the convertiplane UAVs, named rotor-wing or stop-
rotor, employs a rotary wing that spins to provide lift during vertical
flight and stops to act like a fixed-wing during cruise flight. Such design
methodology was initially exploited by Sikorsky Aircraft [7] in devel-
oping their first manned rotor-wing prototype (a modified Sikorsky S-72
integrated with X-Wing composite blades shown in Fig. 1(c)). Later, it
was only researched by Boeing and Naval Research Laboratory in
designing two rotor-wing UAVs, that is, X-50 DragonFly [59] and NRL
96
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
Stop-Rotor aircraft [60], respectively. The main reason for such inactivity
is that the unique rotor-wing feature poses over critical challenges to a
qualified solution to balance the design complexities in terms of aero-
dynamics and mechanics. For the X-50 DragonFly, the symmetric rotor
design with an elliptic airfoil section was inherited from its predecessor
S-72 X-Wing [61] to simplify the mechanical drive train. However, such
feature leads to the usage of additional lift-canard and enlarged hori-
zontal tail to assist lift generation during the hover-to-cruise conversion.
To avoid the tail-rotor usage, the X-50 DragonFly applied a complicated
tip-jet-driven mechanism to the main rotor. The rotation speed is
controlled by the exhaust from a jet engine through thrust nozzles located
at the rotor tips. As for the electrically powered NRL Stop-Rotor aircraft, a
highly complicated drive train which was detailed in Ref. [60], was
compulsorily adopted to pivot the rotor.
None of the aforementioned prototypes have succeeded in completing
the transition from the vertical flight mode to the cruise mode. Largely
due to the inherently too challenging design, both the Sikorsky S-72 X-
Wing project and the Boeing X-50 project have been canceled. However,
Singapore University of Technology and Design recently developed a
rotor-wing hybrid UAV called THOR with a tailless flying wing config-
uration and a single-axis rotor [62]. As shown in Fig. 7, the UAV
completed a full envelope flight including transition to and from cruise
mode. Although controllers were only implemented for cruise and hover
flights, this work can be considered a breakthrough in advances in this
branch with further development of the modeling dynamics, design pa-
rameters and control strategies to be implemented.
2.2. Tail-sitter
The other type of hybrid UAV is the tail-sitter which takes-off and
lands vertically on its tail and the entire airframe tilts to achieve cruise
flight. Such intuitive configuration is traced back to the 1950s, when two
pioneering trials on manned tail-sitter aircraft, XFY-1 [63] developed by
Convair shown in Fig. 1(d) and XFV-1 [10] developed by Lockheed
shown in Fig. 1(e), occurred. With the increasing maturity and cost
reduction of miniature UAV development over the last two decades, this
concept was commonly adopted in developing tactical UAVs. Based on
the transition mechanism, these tail-sitter UAVs can be classified into
three sub-types: 1) Mono Thrust Transitioning (MTT), 2) Collective
Thrust Transitioning (CTT), and 3) Differential Thrust Transitioning
(DTT).
A.S. Saeed et al.
Fig. 7. Rotor-wing UAV (THOR) flight test [62].
2.2.1. Mono Thrust Transitioning (MTT)
MTT tail-sitter UAVs usually employ a single rotor located either at
the nose or at the rear side of the aircraft fuselage for thrust generation.
The transition to and from cruise flight is usually achieved via vectored
thrust, ducted fan vanes, cyclic or variable blade pitch propeller or
swashplates. Four representative cases shown in Fig. 8 and identified in
our survey include 1) SkyTote [64] developed by AeroVironment, 2)
Flexrotor [65] developed by Aerovel Cooperation, 3) V-Bat [15] devel-
oped by MartinUAV, and 4) Hybrid tail-sitter UAV [66] developed at
KAIST Flight Dynamics and Control Laboratory (FDCL). Despite falling
into the same category, the methods of realizing attitude stabilization at
hover are rather different. More specifically, SkyTote features the usage
of a co-axial rotor for thrust generation and automatic yawing torque
cancellation in vertical flight. A sophisticated control scheme involving
rotor spin speed, 3 blade pitch, aileron collective and cyclic pitch, and
stabilizer (located at the cruciform tail) collective and cyclic pitch, was
developed for attitude control. Flexrotor generates thrust via a rotor with
variable blade pitch. The rolling and pitching movements are realized by
cyclically changing the rotor's blade pitch. A novel anti-yawing mecha-
nism is adopted by Flexrotor: two tiny rotors are installed at the wing tips
with opposite orientations to counter the yawing torque generated by the
main rotor. As for the V-Bat and FDCL's tail-sitter UAV, a shrouded
ducted-fan installed at the rear side of the fuselage is employed to
generate thrust. The deflection of the ducted-fan's vanes is controlled
individually and further combined to achieve desired attitude change
[66]. Besides, control surfaces such as aileron and/or canard also
contribute to a small portion of moment generation. Generally speaking,
designing a functional MTT tail-sitter UAV, compared with other hybrid
aircraft, is indeed more challenging, and the complexity can be sum-
marized in the following three aspects. First, the size, airfoil selection,
and blade pitch control of the rotor must be carefully determined to cover
a fairly wide range of thrust generation that is suitable for both vertical
and cruise flight modes. Secondly, slender wing design with relatively
high aspect ratio is commonly adopted by MTT tail-sitter UAVs to
minimize the disturbance caused by cross wind during vertical flight.
However, such configuration poses an inherent limitation to the payload
Fig. 8. Representative examples of MTT tail-sitter UAVs.
97
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
capacity when operating in fixed-wing mode. The third and most risky
issue is that, due to the single rotor configuration, the hover-to-cruise
transition is commonly achieved via a Stall-and-Tumble procedure
(illustrated in Refs. [67,68]) during which control loss could easily occur.
Consequently, few trajectories were proposed to mitigate the steep alti-
tude loss by introducing trajectory-optimization techniques as in Refs.
[69–72]. To date, the development of the MTT tail-sitter UAVs is still in
an immature stage and no traces on mass production and remarkable
implementations were recorded. Lastly, some effort on developing
miniature MTT tail-sitter UAVs are identified in some academic work
such as [73] but the results presented are only limited to conceptual
design.
2.2.2. Collective Thrust Transitioning (CTT)
CTT tail-sitter UAVs are usually equipped with single or multiple
fixed-pitch non-cyclic blade rotors. The transition between the vertical
and cruise flight modes is realized mainly via the deflection of various
control surfaces coupled with collectively increased or decreased thrust.
Although the usage of multiple rotors increases the control freedom and
can consequently outperform the MTT tail-sitter UAVs, only two CTT tail-
sitter prototypes achieved remarkable progress in terms of platform
design, that is, the T-Wing prototype developed by the University of
Sydney and the VD200 developed by China's Chengdu Aircraft Research
and Design Institute (CARDI). Both of them fall into miniature UAV
category, and adopt twin-rotor and fixed-pitch blade configurations. The
research on the T-Wing is a pioneer work conducted in the academia that
explores the potential of applying CTT tail-sitter UAVs into defense and
civilian missions [74,75]. This prototype features a conventional
low-wing airplane configuration with assistance from a pair of lifting
canards and flight trials over the full envelope have been successfully
conducted [76]. As for the VD200, the flying-wing fuselage design was
chosen, which, in principle, can result in an enhanced payload capacity
and eliminate the Stall-and-Tumble procedure [77]. However, no
flight-test record is archived in the literature for this platform as a proof
of the aforementioned claim. Like the MTT tail-sitter UAVs, the devel-
opment of the CTT UAVs is also still in an immature stage and no traces
A.S. Saeed et al. Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105

on mass production and remarkable implementations were recorded.

No systematic work found in

Some academic work such as [78,79] developed miniature CTT tail-sitter
UAVs but the results presented are only limited to either conceptual

[66,71,72,107–112]
[38,39,44,46,47,49,
design such as in Ref. [79] or preliminary implementation level such as

[26,29,33,89–101]
[78].

[81,87,88,126]
[62,105,106]

the literature

[113–125]
102–104]
2.2.3. Differential Thrust Transitioning (DTT)

RMCW
A primary design feature of DTT tail-sitter UAVs is that partial rotors
are installed above and below the vehicle's horizontal plane. The dif-
ferential change of these rotors' thrust generates a pitching torque and

Unstable vertical flight, Low cruising speed, complex control systems, Low payload capacity, Low

Reduced efficiency in horizontal flight, Sufficient differential thrust to be provided, Vulnerable to

further leads to the mode transition. Our survey has found that six UAV

Unsuccessful previous attempts, complex transition mechanism, unstable due to single rotor
Vulnerable to cross winds, Difficult to land in moving decks, Heavy and powerful actuators
platforms shown in Fig. 10 belong to this category, including: ATMOS-

Unstable vertical flight, Difficult to land in moving decks, Strong tail landing mechanisms
UAV developed by ATMOS [80], VertiKUL developed by the University
of Luvine [81], Project Wing developed by Google X [82,83], Heliwing
developed by Boeing [84], two RC-fan-developed prototype X PlusOne

Poor aerodynamic performance, Structural complexities, Actuators required

[14]and QuadShot [85,86]. It is until the last decade that the DTT
tail-sitter UAV gained significantly enhanced popularity, which is mainly

required, Vulnerable to cross winds, Difficult to land in moving decks

due to the rapid maturity and prevalence of miniature multi-rotor aerial
vehicles and the potential of embedding the multi-rotor concept into the
fixed-wing aircraft design for enhanced capacity and endurance. The

Extra unnecessary weight, Very few examples in industry

resulting hybrid UAVs inspired by such intensive interest ended up
sharing several key design similarities such as 1) flying wing for high
payload and 2) quad-rotor configuration for structural simplicity.

cross winds, Difficult to land in moving decks

Compared with the CTT type, DTT UAVs have two distinguished ad-
vantages: 1) no involvement of control surfaces in VTOL operation, and

Advantages and Disadvantages of the types of hybrid UAVs and the corresponding Representative Modeling and Control Work (RMCW).
2) enhanced thrust-to-weight ratio. According to our survey, all the
aforementioned DTT UAVs have four rotors to provide differential thrust
to make the transition to horizontal flight and back. However, ATMOS
and Quadshot have control surfaces or tilting rotors for control during
horizontal flight unlike VertiKUL which depends on differential thrust to
control the aircraft in all modes as well as performing the transition. Both
ways seem to operate well in both flight modes but those using the
Disadvantages

control surfaces during horizontal flight require extra actuators to control

Endurance
the ailerons, rudders and elevators which increases the weight of the required

aircraft. On the other hand, VertiKUL requires more complex control

strategies since it only uses differential thrust for control in both modes.
Consequently, further development of the parameter selections and

No extra actuators, Controllability and stability, Common in Research and Industry, Various
No extra actuators, Efficient forward flight, High Cruising speed, Various design options for
control approaches are being carried as illustrated in Refs. [87,88]. The
Controllability and stability, Easy takeoff and landing, Various design options for wing
Good aerodynamic performance, Common in Research and Industry, Simple transition

authors found few technical information on the other aforementioned

Controllability and Stability, Common in Research, Easy takeoff and landing, Simple

DTT tail-sitter UAVs.

Table 1 summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of each type of
the hybrid UAVs.

3. Flight dynamics modeling and control

A reliable model that accurately captures the flight dynamics over the
design options for wing geometry, Easy takeoff and landing

flight envelope of interest is critically important for developing the

autonomous flight control system. For the hybrid UAVs, the flight en-
wing geometry, Common in Research and Industry

velope can be generally divided into three modes, namely, vertical flight
mode, transition mode, and level flight mode. As a result, developing a
reliable flight dynamics model becomes more challenging compared with
geometry, Simple transition mechanism
Easy takeoff and landing, Lightweight

any conventional aircraft.

Depending on the specific type of the hybrid UAV as well as the
specified missions, the orientation kinematics can be expressed via two
No extra actuators required

formulations, namely, Euler angles and Quaternion. Generally, Euler

angle representation dominates the convertiplanes and single mode (e.g.,
transition mechanism

hover or cruise with constant speed) of partial tail-sitters because the

fuselage does not change with large amplitude. On the other hand, the
tail-sitters operating over full flight envelope commonly adopt quater-
Advantages

mechanism

nion representations because the transition between hover and level

flight modes leads to approximately 90-degree pitch angle change which
has a high chance to raise the singularity of Euler-angle representation.
According to our survey, Newton-Euler formulation is commonly adop-
Tilt-Rotors

Tilt-Wings

Systems
Wings

ted to represent the rigid body dynamics of hybrid UAVs. However, only
Table 1

Rotor-

Dual-
Type

MTT

DTT
CTT

few research works (i.e. [118–120,125]) adopt Euler Lagrange formu-

lation without highlighting the particular reason for their selection.

98
A.S. Saeed et al. Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105

Regarding the propulsion system of hybrid UAVs, two coupled sub
components (i.e., the propeller aerodynamics and the motor dynamics)
are involved. For the former, the majority of the modeling works adopt
highly simplified dynamics model which involves very fundamental
aerodynamic analysis. For instance, in Refs. [110] and [114] only
quasi-steady equations are utilized to model the aerodynamic forces and
moments. For the latter, no research work has particularly paid attention
to the motor dynamics. Thus, the response of propulsion systems to the
actuator input is assumed instantaneous. Particularly for the case of
hybrid UAVs, the motor dynamics might have a significant effect during
the transition phase and therefore it should be studied intensively.
The transition mode requires careful attention from the modeling
aspect due to two reasons. Firstly, the sources of required lift change. The
lift in vertical flight comes from the thrust generated by the rotors
whereas the lift in horizontal flight comes from the aerodynamics of the
wings and tails. Secondly, due to the change in UAV's configuration, the
direction of some of the forces changes accordingly. For example during
transition of tilt-rotor or tilt-wing, the direction of the thrust from the
tilting rotors changes during the transition phase and therefore it should
be modeled appropriately.
As introduced in Section 2, the tilting mechanism uniquely belongs to
two types of convertiplane UAVs: tilt-rotor and tilt-wing. Similar to the
propeller aerodynamics part, the current tilt-rotor and tilt-wing modeling
works adopt highly simplified models to account for the tilting motion of
the propulsion systems. For instance, a common method has been
documented in Refs. [29,89,101] in which two instantaneous shaft tilting
angles, αL and αR , are defined for the rotation of the left and right front
propulsion systems and the tilting motion is reflected by a rotation matrix
based on the tilting angles defined. Given the configuration of the
dual-system UAVs, no specialized modeling for the transition phase is
required because the transition to and from cruise flight is achieved by
operating directed rotors accordingly. No systematic transition phase
modeling has been documented for rotor-wing UAVs. On the other hand,
the tail sitters are viewed differently since no specialized mechanisms are
employed for achieving the transition. The UAV does not change its
configuration and therefore no extra modeling parameters are required.
Instead, certain control strategies have to be employed in order to ach-
ieve a safe transition to and from cruise flight. These strategies are dis-
cussed later in this section.
The core of the control system depends on the derived dynamics
model. Particularly speaking, the dynamics of the hybrid UAVs, which is
highly complicated and nonlinear, can be inherently unstable because it
inherits the operation of a fixed-wing and VTOL UAVs. Even if horizontal
and vertical modes are analyzed separately, the transition phase remains
a critical part of the control system due to the multiple nonlinearities in
the model.
The main and most critical part of the control systems is the control
law which can be classified into linear and nonlinear. As previously
mentioned, hybrid UAV models are nonlinear but are commonly linear-
ized by applying relative equilibrium conditions around a steady state
operating point allowing the implementation of linear controllers.
However, although linear control laws are simple, easy to implement,
reduce the computational effort and minimize the design time but their
performance degrade when operating away from the local equilibrium
point or while performing agile maneuvers. This is very critical during
the transition flight for the case of hybrid UAVs because changing from
vertical flight mode to horizontal flight mode and vice versa results in
operation far away from the relative equilibrium condition. That is the
reason behind which some current hybrid UAVs implement nonlinear
controllers or three separate linear controllers, one for the horizontal
mode, one for the vertical mode and one for the transition. From the
survey conducted, it was found that the classical Proportional-Integral-
Derivative (PID) controller and the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR)
are the most common linear control laws applied in hybrid UAVs while
the gain-scheduling, back-stepping, and Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion
(NDI) are the common nonlinear laws. Table 2 shows a summary of the
control laws with their advantages, disadvantages and implementations
on different types of hybrid UAVs [127–129].
From the review, it was found that the PID controller gain values were
mostly determined by empirical tuning until some preconceived ideal
response of the system is achieved. Since PID control strategy only re-
quires appropriate adjustment of the control gains, it serves as a concrete
starting design point for many hybrid UAVs as it does not require
extensive knowledge of the model. Regarding nonlinear controllers, it
was found that gain-scheduling was mainly utilized to enhance the
control during transition and back-stepping method was mostly coupled
with using Euler-Lagrange approach for the dynamic modeling. There are
several other control laws implemented in the hybrid UAVs [66,91,113].
apply adaptive control techniques which account for the nonlinearities
and uncertainties present in the model. J.A. Guerrero et al. [112] pre-
sents a robust control design based on sliding mode of a mini birotor
tail-sitter for the hovering mode. The work in Ref. [130] shows the
control of hovering flight and vertical landing using optical flow. Fault
tolerant flight control system for a tilt-rotor UAV was discussed by S. Park
et al. in Ref. [100]. Moreover, other control strategies based on Lyapunov
stability concepts can be found in Refs. [93,99,118–120].
The last column of Table 1 provides a complete list of the documen-
tations related to the dynamics modeling and flight control systems of
hybrid UAVs following the categorization method introduced in Section
2. According to the review conducted, no systematic modeling or control
work on dual-system hybrid UAVs have been documented in the litera-
ture. The remaining part of this section will focus on analyzing some

Table 2
Control Laws Classification of the hybrid UAVs.
Control Law Advantages Disadvantages Tilt- Tilt- Rotor- MTT CTT DTT
Rotor Wing wing

PID Easy implantation, very common control scheme Poor robust ability compared with the [26,29, [46,47, [62] [66,71, [116,118, [81,
design in real life applications, does not require robust controller when the system 91,92] 103, 107, 122–124] 126]
the knowledge of the UAV model encounters to multiple challenges, not 104] 109,
optimal solution 111]
LQR Handles complex dynamic systems and multiple Requires access to the full state which [97, [39,47] – [108] [117,124] –
actuators, robust w.r.t process uncertainty, is not always possible 100]
asymptotically stable for controllable systems,
very large stability margins to errors in the loop
Backstepping Very robust for external disturbances and Not optimal, computationally [90,93, – – – [113] –
irregular parameter uncertainties, deals with all expensive for operation in real time 98,99,
the states of the system and accounts for the 101]
nonlinearities
Gain- Allows easy understanding and simple computationally expensive for – [104] – [71] [116,117, –
Scheduling implementation of the control laws over the full operation in real time 124]
flight envelope
NDI Closed loops can be easily tuned Requires a precise knowledge of the [89] – – [66,72] – –
aerodynamic coefficients

99
A.S. Saeed et al.
unique features of the work given in Table 1.
3.1. Tilt-rotor
Starting with the tilt-rotor hybrid UAVs, most of the works (e.g. [29,
89,90,101], for bi-rotor convertiplane [91,96], for tri-rotor converti-
plane, and [93] for quad-rotor convertiplane) employ highly simplified
motor dynamics and tilting mechanisms to minimize the complexity of
the overall model. An exception that can be treated as a benchmark is the
modeling work documented in Ref. [96], in which a fairly complete flight
dynamics model for a bi-rotor convertiplane has been proposed. The
propulsion system is modeled in depth by introducing additional coor-
dinate systems (such as Nacelle axis system, hub-axis system, and blade
axis system) and including the flapping motion of the propellers.
Furthermore, the aerodynamics of the control surfaces and fuselage are
carefully determined via variety of wind-tunnel experiments. Model
validation in both time- and frequency-domains is presented and the
results indicate the relative high fidelity of the proposed model. In
another work documented in Ref. [94], the essential role of the wind
tunnel usage in determining various aerodynamic coefficients is clearly
demonstrated via both large amount of data and model validation results.
Instead of using the experimental results collected in the wind-tunnel, the
authors of [33,95] have explored the possibility of using CFD to deter-
mine the aerodynamic coefficients for a 0.15-scale MV-22 bi-rotor
convertiplane and a custom-built tri-rotor convertiplane TURAC respec-
tively. Validation results have also been presented in Ref. [95] to prove
the efficiency of the CFD-based estimation. It is vital to mention that the
use of wind tunnels, CFD techniques or any other method for aero-
dynamics modeling is subject to several factors such as project funding,
particular interest, etc.
Most of the works reviewed about tilt-rotors concerned the control
systems of bi-rotors (e.g. Refs. [26,29,89,90,97,98]) since the bi-rotor is
an underactuated system in hover mode where there are only four ac-
tuators for six degrees of freedom. In Ref. [29], which presents the
experimental attitude control of UPAT tilt-rotor prototype shown in
Fig. 3(e), the model was linearized about the hovering point and PID
loops were utilized for controlling the system because of the simplicity in
terms of implementation at high frequency rates using an embedded
microprocessor and the requirement of high bandwidth and zero steady
state error. It was noted in Ref. [29] that a Proportional-Derivative (PD)
controller will lead to system stability as well but a simple Proportional
(P) controller will not because of the inherent underactuated critically
unstable dynamics. Moreover, to minimize noise from attitude rate
measurements and improve the performance of the PID controller a
Low-Pass filter with time being constant was convoluted with the de-
rivative term in Ref. [29]. Experimental verification was done for the
hovering mode but yet to be done for level flight and transition [26].
presents another work related to the control of a bi-rotor shown in
Fig. 3(b) where the attitude control was done by an inner and an outer
feedback control loop. The objective of the inner loop, which considers
angular rates as the controlled variables, is to decouple the system and
improve the frequency response and stability characteristics by adopting
state feedback combining the compensable matrix, whereas, the outer
loop, which targets the attitude control, focuses on the control quality of
the controlled variables based on Proportional-Integral (PI) control.
Experiment tests verified that the linearization trim control point was
valid and the control law testing is yet to be done [26]. Following the
work presented in Refs. [131] and [132] which demonstrate the concept
design study and the flight control of a tilt duct UAV showing that the
system is overactuated with redundant controls and is unstable in con-
version mode, a State Dependent Riccati Equation (SDRE) control law,
which is considered as an improved LQR, was studied for the imple-
mentation in the tilt duct UAV in Ref. [97]. The controller proposed is
nonlinear and does not require the linearization of the system but it re-
quires that the system remains controllable with the appropriate choice
of the state factorization used. Tekinalp and his colleagues avoided this
100
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
issue by treating the equations of motion as inner and outer loop states
and inputs. The inner loop, which uses SDRE control, considers the
rotational and translational velocities and the outer loop considers the
Euler angle kinematics. Simulation results showed that the system suc-
cessfully controls the tilt duct but experimental verification should follow
[98]. and [90] synthesized a nonlinear controller based on back-stepping
control strategy. Both works showed simulations which indicate the
stability and operability of the control system. However, no experimental
validation was carried out [89]. presented a control strategy for the
transition mode based on the dynamic inversion technique using refer-
ence model tracking to linearize the system and extended state observer
to compensate for external disturbances. Simulations showed that the
method is robust and the conversion can be controlled successfully but
again, the control strategy was not verified experimentally.
Only two works [92], and [91], demonstrated the control of Tri-rotor
tilt-rotor UAV. Regarding [91], although a PD controller was sufficient
for altitude control but PID was used to ensure safe flight and another PID
controller was also implemented for attitude control. Moreover, an
adaptive control using neural network was used to enable the adapt-
ability of control gains of the PID controller which therefore minimizes
the position error. This unique strategy was only demonstrated in
Ref. [91] and it was shown by simulations using MATLAB that the pro-
posed strategy can be implemented in reality. For [92], the system was
linearized around its hovering point and PID controllers were imple-
mented for the same reasons as [29]. However, no experimental verifi-
cation was found for both Tri-rotors.
Regarding Quad tilt-rotors, Flores and Lozano worked on the transi-
tion flight control of a Quad tilt-rotor from hover to level flight [93,99].
They have proposed, designed and simulated a nonlinear back-stepping
approach for the attitude dynamics and tilting mechanism and nested
saturation control approach for altitude and velocity control. In Ref. [99],
they have completed the work in Ref. [93] by adding the pitch dynamics.
Level to hover flight control and experimental verification are required in
the next phase. Apart from that, a very unique work presented by Park
and his colleagues in Ref. [100] shows a proposal for a fault control
scheme for the actuator and sensor faults for the tilt-rotor UAV system.
An LQR controller that makes the Euler angles track the desired com-
mand values was applied for actuator faults and a fault detection and
isolation algorithm and a fault tolerant federated Kalman filter were
presented for the sensor faults. Numerical simulations carried out on the
linearized model in the airplane mode only showed the effectiveness and
robustness of the scheme. However, simulations for others modes and
experimental verification should follow.
3.2. Tilt-wing
Compared with tilt-rotor hybrid UAVs, less interest in modeling and
control of tilt-wing hybrid UAVs has been observed. Furthermore [47,49,
102], are based on an identical custom-built miniature tandem tilt-wing
hybrid UAV and only one modeling work [39] on single tilt-wing hybrid
UAV has been found. All the proposed models adopt Euler-angle
expression, Newton-Euler formulation, and highly simplified motor dy-
namics and tilting mechanisms [39]. shows the control concept of a
single wing tilt-wing hybrid UAV called AVIGLE shown in Fig. 5(b). Their
control system contained three different controllers, one for the hori-
zontal mode (consisting of P and PI sub-controllers), one for the vertical
mode (consisting of P, PI and PID sub-controllers) and one for the tran-
sition mode where the horizontal speed controllers of the vertical mode
sub-controllers are deactivated and the cruise control is assigned to the
transition control. Also, a supervisor controller is proposed to decide the
activation of the controllers and sub-controllers. Several simulation tests
were carried out and the concept was satisfactory but no hardware test
was performed yet. Regarding tandem tilt-wing UAVs, the control of
SUAVI shown in Fig. 5(g) is demonstrated in Refs. [47,103] where [47]
shows the simulation of LQR based position control for vertical flight and
[103] shows the hierarchical control system design and vertical flight
A.S. Saeed et al.
experiments implementing a PD controller, both where successful.
Transition control and Horizontal control are yet to be done and verified
experimentally.
3.3. Rotor-wing
Only two research works [62], and [105,106], were found regarding
the modeling and control of rotor-wing UAVs. Both implemented a
simplified model of the rotor-wing dynamics implementing rotation
matrices and Newton-Euler formulations [105,106]. presented and
analyzed a combination of linear and nonlinear control methods for the
hovering flight of the rotor-wing where the linear control (LQR) works
when operating close to the equilibrium point and a Lyapunov approach
based nonlinear controller was implemented to achieve global stability.
No experimental tests were carried out to verify the model and flight
control fidelity. In Ref. [62] which is employed for the hybrid UAV called
THOR shown in Fig. 7, the cruise and hover modes were modeled
separately and tests were conducted to verify the model using PID
controller for the cruise mode and P controller for the hover mode.
However, each test was carried out for a single mode, therefore, the full
envelope model verification is yet to be done. Because of their unique-
ness, these works can be considered as a benchmark in this sub-category;
however, more accurate modeling and control techniques are to be
further employed.
3.4. Mono Thrust Transitioning (MTT) and Collective Thrust Transitioning
(CTT)
A number of research works on MTTs and CTTs have been carried out
and documented in the literature. Part of them only focuses on vertical
flight mode and attitude stabilization. For instance [109,111,112,122],
show the hovering control strategies for MTT tail-sitters whereas
[118–120,125] focused on the hovering control and attitude stabilization
of bi-rotor CTT tail-sitters. Although Newton-Euler formulation was
commonly adopted but [118–120,125] which present the development
of two types of bi-rotor CTTs considered Euler-Lagrange formulation for
modeling their dynamics. As attitude stabilization in hover mode is the
focus, Euler angle instead of quaternion is commonly used for more
straightforward attitude representation. In Refs. [109,111,116,118], the
system was linearized about the hovering point and PID controllers were
used because of their good performance and easy implementation and
regulation for attitude stabilization (roll, pitch and yaw). Given the dif-
ficulty of adjustment for big and complicated systems such as the MTT or
CTT tail-sitters, several research works adopted modified control laws for
attitude stabilization during hover flight. In Ref. [122], two control
strategies, quaternion feedback control and resolved Tilt-Twist Angle
Feedback control, were applied to the PID controller and experimental
tests were carried out and each strategy was evaluated accordingly [112].
implemented a control law based on the sliding mode control technique
which is applied to stabilize the decoupled attitude control systems
[119]. demonstrated a control scheme based on saturations to achieve
stability of the CTT by studying lateral, longitudinal and axial dynamics
separately for simplicity. All works presented valid simulations for their
control strategies; however, with the exception of [109,116,119,122], no
other work verified their control design experimentally.
The transition of tail-sitters from vertical flight to horizontal flight
and back attracted researchers' interests as several works investigated the
modeling and control methods of tail-sitters covering the full envelope;
that is, hover, transition, and level flight. More specifically [71,
107–110], which concentrate on the modeling of MTT hybrid UAV, and
[113–117,121], which concentrate on the modeling of CTT hybrid UAVs,
adopt 1) quaternion formulation for avoiding the singularity in pitch
angle expression and 2) simple expression for propulsion systems. In
order to enhance the accuracy of the proposed model, additional effort
has been made in some documented works, mainly on motor dynamics
and aerodynamic coefficients determination. For instance, in Ref. [71], a
101
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
ducted-fan design code is employed to account for the unique duct fan
feature of the custom-made MTT developed at the KAIST shown in
Fig. 8(d) and a Navier-Stokes solver integrated into the FLUENT toolkit is
used to determine aerodynamic control coefficients. In another two
documentations [113,115] based on a miniature CTT hybrid UAV
developed at BYU, aerodynamic coefficients are determined by maxi-
mally matching the flight test data collected in experiments. Furthermore
[113], also addresses a technique of modeling the angular dynamics as a
combination of one bias acceleration term and one actuator-based input
term which aims at reducing the computational load of physical
parameter estimation. Moreover [117,121], additionally considered
motor dynamics aiming at covering the key dynamic features of the CTT
proposed model. Validation results and analysis are again rarely
addressed with the exception of [108,110]. In Ref. [108], identification
results for the longitudinal motions are provided and in Ref. [110], a
comparison between the model responses and actual experimental data is
conducted where non-ignorable deviations have been observed for all
channels which indicates that the model accuracy can be further
enhanced.
The transition is usually achieved by what is known as stall-and-
tumble maneuver or optimal trajectory. However, an alternative ma-
neuver (Continuous ascent) was demonstrated by Refs. [71] and [72] for
MTT tail-sitters where in Ref. [72] they developed a dynamic inversion
control law and consistent simulations were done and in Ref. [71] they
used those simulations to determine several design points for interme-
diate PID controllers which are linked using gain-scheduling. In addition
to that, the development and application of an adaptive controller which
can track the desired attitude despite the uncertainties and unexpected
variations was presented. The designed controller was tested by the MTT
tail-sitter prototype for hovering flight only. However, it was verified
experimentally using a testbed tail-sitter UAV which entered level flight
autonomously and then the transition controller was activated to make
the transition from level flight to hover and back. Moreover, the control
architecture of the V-Bat MTT tail-sitter shown in Fig. 8(c) is demon-
strated in Ref. [107] where separate controllers are applied for each
mode, namely, hover, level, level to hover and hover to level. One issue
with their proposed controller is that their transition controller does not
minimize the altitude error. Currently, their control system is being
implemented in hardware. In Ref. [113], the complete flight envelope of
the CTT tail-sitter is illustrated in which an adaptive quaternion
controller using the back-stepping method was designed based on regu-
larized date-weighted recursive least squares parameter estimation al-
gorithm enabling the controller to adapt to the rapid changing dynamics.
The control strategy was tested experimentally which makes this work
considered as one of the benchmarks in the control of single-rotor CTT
tail-sitters. Moreover, few research works [117,123,124], investigated
the control of transition phase of bi-rotor CTT tail-sitters. More specif-
ically [117], and [123] have developed separate controllers for different
modes of flight (vertical, horizontal, horizontal to vertical, etc..) where
they have set linearization operating points for each controller (LQR for
[117] and PID for [123]) and simulated their control strategies suc-
cessfully but the control laws were not implemented on any platform. A
nonlinear control law was also studied in Ref. [117] and it was concluded
that both, the linear and nonlinear control laws, were feasible for the
control of the tail-sitter; however, this is without taking into account the
wind disturbances, sensor noise and experimental implementation.
Stone, the main developer of T-wing shown in Fig. 9(a), considered the
control architecture of his tail-sitter by analyzing separate control stra-
tegies for vertical flight (using gain-scheduling LQR technique), hori-
zontal flight (using classical SISO root-locus techniques) and transition
flight (using the horizontal controllers as basis and changing the guid-
ance technique) [124]. The T-wing performed fully autonomous vertical
flight but the full envelope flight (including transition and horizontal
flight) is yet to be done.
A.S. Saeed et al.
Fig. 9. Representative examples of CTT tail-sitter UAVs.
Fig. 10. Representative examples of DTT tail-sitter UAVs.
3.5. Differential Thrust Transitioning (DTT)
For DTT, little work on dynamical modeling and control has been
documented in the literature, as DTT-based UAV is still a relatively new
topic to the academia and even less systematic research has yet been
conducted. One representative work on DTT dynamics modeling is pre-
sented in Ref. [81], in which a quaternion-based Newton-Euler formu-
lation model is proposed for the custom-made quadcopter tail-sitter
named VertiKUL shown in Fig. 10(b). Detailed descriptions of the pa-
rameters selection and control approaches for VertiKUL followed where
several components where modeled and the sensitivity of important
parameters is analyzed [87,88]. For its control, PID controllers were
adopted for the attitude, velocity and transition stabilization and a
separate specialized controller was implemented for the heading of the
vehicle. Flight tests and validations were illustrated leading to a
remarkable progress on the advances of this subcategory [126]. is
another work targeting DTT but it focused mainly on power consumption
and energy efficiency instead of the flight control system (which is
beyond the scope of this article).
4. Key observations, existing challenges and concluding remarks
A technical overview of the hybrid UAVs has been provided in this
paper. The common platform design types were first categorized fol-
lowed by explanation and representative examples of the flight modeling
techniques and the flight control strategies implemented. Table 1 shows
102
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
the advantages, disadvantages and the corresponding modeling and
control work of each type of hybrid UAVs. Table 2 highlights the ad-
vantages and disadvantages of the control laws adopted for hybrid UAVs
and their implementation on each type. Throughout this survey, several
key observations have been concluded as follows:
 The concept of hybrid aerial vehicles has long been investigated by
aeronautical industries for designing and manufacturing manned
aircraft to enable a wider range of missions. Many of these trials were
not successful. However, with the low-cost of the miniature UAVs,
enhanced control techniques, and the thriving demand of the civilian
and military markets, the concept has regained a huge interest and
increasing popularity as the survey showed plenty of designs
featuring the horizontal and vertical flight capabilities together.
Moreover, many of the prototypes were successful and are docu-
mented in the literature and some others have been commercialized
successfully. As an example, manned tail-sitters (i.e. such as the
Convair XFY-1 [9] and Lockheed XFV-1 [10] shown in Fig. 1(e) and
(f) respectively) did not achieve remarkable success and some pro-
jects in that regard were cancelled mainly because of the control and
piloting difficulties. This problem is, of course, overcome by the uti-
lization of unmanned tail-sitters which eliminates the need of the
pilot and integrates advanced control techniques to ensure stability
and safe transition to and from cruise flight. That is why the authors
found several Tail-sitter prototypes, many of which were successful.
A.S. Saeed et al.
 The convertiplane hybrid UAVs were more dominant than the tail-
sitters. This is mainly due to the simple mechanism and control,
smooth transition, and enhanced vertical flight stability of some sub-
types of the convertiplanes. Furthermore, the most common sub-type
among all the platform designs was the tilt-rotor convertiplane for
which the authors found plenty of prototypes and, as mentioned
earlier, many of which were successfully commercialized. This is
mainly due to the enhanced controllability and stability, easy takeoff
and landing and simple transition mechanism.
 The majority of the current modeling work adopts highly simplified
models, in which very fundamental motor dynamics and preliminary
or even no aerodynamics for the propeller dynamics are contained.
Such method mitigates the workload on the dynamics modeling and
further enables researchers with little aerodynamics background to
quickly proceed to the stage of flight control law design. However,
very rare work has addressed the model validation of such simplified
model in a systematic manner, which make the utilization of the
simplified model questionable to a certain level. Furthermore, due to
the oversimplification, the accuracy of the developed model has a
high chance to decrease significantly, and may deteriorate the per-
formance of the corresponding control law design.
 The system identification approach, which has been widely utilized
for deriving dynamic models for both fixed-wing and rotary aircraft,
is rarely employed for hybrid UAV research. According to [133], a
systematic integration of the system identification approach and the
first-principles modeling (i.e., the method adopted by the current
modeling work listed in Table 1) can generate a high-fidelity dy-
namics model for desired flight conditions or envelopes and can be
reliably utilized in the subsequent control law design. The imple-
mentation of the aforementioned method on various hybrid UAVs is a
promising trend.
 Very rare work achieved the full autonomy of the hybrid UAV as most
of the works only investigated a single flight mode. For instance, for
the case of tail-sitters, some works addressed the hovering control
only and for the case of all hybrid UAVs, most works concentrated on
the transition phase only. Therefore, developing a control strategy for
the full envelope including all the flight modes is rarely addressed and
remains a promising trend.
 The majority of the current control work did not verify the validity of
their approaches experimentally. Although simulations using MAT-
LAB mostly were common but the implementation of the control laws
on a hardware (platform) were rarely addressed. Furthermore, this
point is critical because when designing the model and control laws,
many simplifications were carried out which means that the robust-
ness, effectiveness and performance of the controller remains
questionable.
 Most of the works implemented simplified linear controllers applying
different configuration of PID controllers. This is because of their
simplicity and easiness of implementation. However, it is important
to note that the performance of linear controllers such as PID de-
teriorates when operating away from the linearization point.
 Few works demonstrated a comparison between the different linear
and nonlinear controllers that can be implemented in different types
of hybrid UAVs. A work that compares those linear and nonlinear
controllers with software simulations and, more importantly, hard-
ware implementations will be considered as pioneer in the field of
UAVs in general and hybrid UAVs specifically since it might validate
the possibility of many simplifications that are done whilst designing
the control laws and strategies for simplicity purposes.
There are two other existing challenges regarding the development of
hybrid UAVs. The first critically challenging issue is the transition of
techniques developed for some miniature scale demonstrator prototypes
to their full-scale counterparts. These are related to manufacturing
methodology, cost analysis, model and control strategies and safety
concerns. The second challenge lies within the propulsion system of the
103
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
hybrid UAVs. Similar to the VTOL UAVs, the vertical mode of hybrid
UAVs consumes a high amount of power to keep the UAV airborne. This
discharges the batteries quickly and therefore reduces the endurance and
range of the hybrid UAV in general. Consequently, some research works
considered solar powered hybrid UAVs [134] and gasoline-electric
hybrid propulsion system [135] as potential solutions to this issue.
Power system optimization and experiments were conducted for the
solar-powered tilt-wing UAV in Ref. [134] but successful flight tests are
required to validate the concept. On the other hand, flight tests were
carried for the gasoline-electric tilt-rotor UAV in Ref. [135]; however,
further testing, modeling and control optimization is still to be done as
well as a detailed analysis of the enhancement achieved by the novel
hybrid propulsion system.
Given their enhanced popularity and recently gained interest, the
hybrid UAVs are becoming more mature in terms of many critical aspects
such as design philosophy, dynamic modeling and control. As a result, it
is expected that they will soon dominate the civilian as well as military
applications. In fact, several research works already considered the
application of hybrid UAVs for vision-aided tracking in Ref. [136], uti-
lization in dense urban environments in Ref. [137] and for automated
external defibrillator (AED) transport in Ref. [138]. Moreover, the DHL
parcelcopter is being integrated for parcel delivery in mountainous re-
gions [42].
To this end, the hybrid UAVs will have a bright future and will
promptly be an essential pillar of the UAV market. The review presented
in this paper is expected to be informative to the researchers who are
interested in the promising hybrid UAV development.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Khalifa University of Science and
Technology and Khalifa University Robotics Institute (KURI) for their
continuous support and assistance.
References
[1] Uav roundup 2013, Aero. Am. 51 (7) (2013) 26–36.
[2] C. Drubin, Uav market worth $ 8.3 b by 2018, Microw. J. (2013) 37.
[3] J.T.K. Ping, A.E. Ling, T.J. Quan, C.Y. Dat, Generic unmanned aerial vehicle (uav)
for civilian application-a feasibility assessment and market survey on civilian
application for aerial imaging, in: Sustainable Utilization and Development in
Engineering and Technology (STUDENT), 2012 IEEE Conference, 2012,
pp. 289–294, https://doi.org/10.1109/STUDENT.2012.6408421.
[4] B. I. For Society, Security, Unmanned Aircarft Systems for Civilian Missions,
February 2012.
[5] V-22 osprey, [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (August n.d.). URL http://www.
boeing.com/defense/v-22-osprey/.
[6] D.C. Dugan, Thrust control of vtol aircraft part deux, in: The 5th Decennial AHS
Aeromechanics Specialists Conf, 2014.
[7] B. Handy, Harrier Gr7, Royal Air Force Aircraft and Weapons, 2003, pp. 8–9.
[8] J. Richmond, It's a Helicopter! It's a Plane, Military Aerospace Technology, High
Technology, 1985, pp. 68–69.
[9] U. S. N. C, Newsletter, Rollout Week, 2009.
[10] Back to the drawing board: The lockheed xfv-1 salmon, [Online, cited 5 December
2017] (n.d.). URL http://www.military-history.org/articles/back-to-the-drawing-
board-the-lockheed-xfv-1-salmon.htm.
[11] Ling-temco-vought xc-142a tri service, [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.).
URL http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/ling_xc-142.php.
[12] Canadair cl-84 dynavert, [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.). URL http://
www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/canadair_dynavert.php.
[13] Firefly6, [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.). URL http://www.birdseyeview.
aero/products/firefly6.
[14] Introducing the xplusone, [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.). URL http://
xcraft.io/.
[15] V-bat, MartinUAV[cited 5 December 2017]. URL http://martinuav.com/products-
v-bat/.
[16] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Bell Eagle Eye, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Bell_Eagle_Eye.
[17] Vertol vz-2 (model 76), [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.). URL https://
airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/vertol-vz-2-model-76.
[18] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Sikorsky S-72, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Sikorsky_S-72.
[19] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], A Harrier Gr7 of 1 Squadron Raf Took Part in
Deck Operations On-board Hms Illustrious, 2017, https://commons.wikimedia.
A.S. Saeed et al.
org/wiki/File:A_Harrier_GR7_of_1_Squadron_RAF_took_part_in_Deck_Operations_
on-board_HMS_Illustrious._MOD_45146085.jpg.
[20] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Convair Xfy-1 Taking off at Naaf Brown Field,
2017, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Convair_XFY-1_taking_off_at_
NAAF_Brown_Field_1954.jpeg.
[21] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Lockheed Xfv-1 under a High Cloud Sky, 2015,
https://travelforaircraft.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/lockheed-xfv-1-write/.
[22] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Ltv Xc-142, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/LTV_XC-142.
[23] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Odd Aiplanes of the Rcaf, 2016, http://
horseformer.blogspot.ae/2016/02/odd-airplanes-of-rcaf.html.
[24] M. Streetly, IHS Jane's All the World Aircraft: Unmanned 2013-2014, IHS, 2013.
[25] Bell eagle eye tiltrotor uav, united states of america, [Online, cited 5 December
2017] (n.d.). URL http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/belleagleeyeuav.
[26] S. Yanguo, W. Huanjin, Design of flight control system for a small unmanned tilt
rotor aircraft, Chin. J. Aeronaut. 22 (3) (2009) 250–256.
[27] M. Hirschberg, Project zero: the exclusive story of agustawestlands all electric
technology incubator, Verti-flite 59 (3) (2013) 10–14.
[28] Unmanned aerial vehicles (uavs), [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.). URL
http://www.4frontrobotics.com/products.
[29] C. Papachristos, K. Alexis, A. Tzes, Design and experimental attitude control of an
unmanned tilt-rotor aerial vehicle, in: 2011 15th International Conference on
Advanced Robotics (ICAR), IEEE, 2011, pp. 465–470.
[30] The eagle eye uav, [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.). URL http://www.odec.
ca/projects/2004/flor4a0/public_html/v44.htm.
[31] U. Ozdemir, Y. Aktas, A. Vuruskan, Y. Dereli, A. Tarhan, K. Demirbag, A. Erdem,
G. Kalaycioglu, I. Ozkol, G. Inalhan, Design of a commercial hybrid vtol uav
system, J. Intell. Rob. Syst. 74 (1–2) (2014) 371–393. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s10846-013-9900-0.
[32] Y.O. Aktas, U. Ozdemir, Y. Dereli, A.F. Tarhan, A. Cetin, A. Vuruskan, B. Yuksek,
H. Cengiz, S. Basdemir, M. Ucar, et al., A low cost prototyping approach for design
analysis and flight testing of the turac vtol uav, in: 2014 International Conference
on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), IEEE, 2014, pp. 1029–1039.
[33] A. Vuruskan, B. Yuksek, U. Ozdemir, A. Yukselen, G. Inalhan, Dynamic modeling
of a fixed-wing vtol uav, in: 2014 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft
Systems (ICUAS), IEEE, 2014, pp. 483–491.
[34] S. Carlson, A Hybrid Tricopter/flying-wing Vtol uav, American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2014.
[35] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Boeing Phantom Swift Selected for Darpa X-
plane Competition, 2014, http://boeing.mediaroom.com/Boeing-Phantom-Swift-
Selected-for-DARPA-X-Plane-Competition.
[36] Quantum tron, [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.). URL http://www.
quantum-systems.com/products/quantum-tron/.
[37] J. Dickeson, D. Miles, O. Cifdaloz, V. Wells, A. Rodriguez, Robust lpv h gain-
scheduled hover-to-cruise conversion for a tilt-wing rotorcraft in the presence of
cg variations, in: 2007 46th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2007,
pp. 2773–2778, https://doi.org/10.1109/CDC.2007.4435028.
[38] J. Holsten, T. Ostermann, D. Moormann, Design and wind tunnel tests of a tiltwing
uav, CEAS Aero. J. 2 (1–4) (2011) 69–79.
[39] T. Ostermann, J. Holsten, Y. Dobrev, D. Moormann, Control Concept of a Tiltwing
UAV during Low Speed Manoeuvring, Optimage Ltd., Edinburgh, UK, 2012, p. 1.
CD-ROM, http://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/97342.
[40] J. Holsten, T. Ostermann, Y. Dobrev, D. Moormann, Model Validation of a
Tiltwing UAV in Transition Phase Applying Windtunnel Investigations, Optimage
Ltd., Edinburgh, UK, 2012, p. 1. CD-ROM, http://publications.rwth-aachen.de/
record/116436.
[41] W. J. Fredericks, M. D. Moore, R. C. Busan, Benefits of hybrid-electric propulsion
to achieve 4x increase in cruise efficiency for a vtol aircraft.
[42] Bonn, Successful Trial Integration of Dhl Parcelcopter into Logistics Chain [Online,
cited 5 December 2017], 2016, http://www.dhl.com/en/press/releases/releases_
2016/all/parcel_ecommerce/successful_trial_integration_dhl_parcelcopter_
logistics_chain.html.
[43] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Dhl Parcelcopter 3.0, 2016, http://www.dpdhl.
com/en/media_relations/specials/parcelcopter.html.
[44] D.K. Koji Muraoka, Noriaki Okada, Quad tilt wing vtol uav: aerodynamic
characteristics and prototype flight, in: AIAA Infotech@Aerospace Conference,
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2009.
[45] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Flight Tests at Taiki Aerospace Research Field to
Evaluate the Flight Controller for Quad Tilt Wing (Qtw) Vtol uav, 2014, http://
www.aero.jaxa.jp/eng/research/frontier/vtol/qtw/news140331.html.
[46] E. Çetinsoy, E. Sirimo
€
glu, K.T. Oner, C. Hancer, M. Ünel, M.F. Akşit, I. Kandemir,
K. Gülez, Design and development of a tilt-wing uav, Turk. J. Electr. Eng. Comput.
Sci. 19 (5) (2011) 733–741.
[47] €
K. T. Oner, E. Çetinsoy, M. Ünel, M. F. Akşit, I. Kandemir, K. Gülez, Dynamic
model and control of a new quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle with tilt-wing
mechanism.
[48] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Ten-engine Electric Plane Completes Successful
Flight Test, 2015, https://www.nasa.gov/langley/ten-engine-electric-plane-
completes-successful-flight-test.
[49] €
K.T. Oner,

E. Çetinsoy, E. SIRIMOGLU, C. Hançer, M. Ünel, M.F. Akşit, K. Gülez,
I. Kandemir, Mathematical modeling and vertical flight control of a tilt-wing uav,
Turk. J. Electr. Eng. Comput. Sci. 20 (1) (2012) 149–157.
[50] G. Heredia, A. Duran, A. Ollero, Modeling and simulation of the hada
reconfigurable uav, J. Intell. Rob. Syst. 65 (1) (2012) 115–122.
[51] Quadcruiser, an innovative hybrid aircraft concept, Airbus Group.
104
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
[52] Arcturus uav - complete unmanned aircraft systems, [Online, cited 5 December
2017] (n.d.). URL http://arcturus-uav.com/.
[53] Latitude, [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.). URL https://
latitudeengineering.com/products/hq.
[54] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Drone Magazine, 2014, http://diydrones.com/
profiles/blogs/out-of-the-black-slt-vtol-uav.
[55] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Rheinmetall Airborne Systems Tactical Hybrid
uas, 2012, http://www.uasvision.com/2012/09/03/rheinmetall-airborne-
systems-tactical-hybrid-uas.
[56] H. Yeo, W. Johnson, Optimum design of a compound helicopter, J. Aircraft 46 (4)
(2009) 1210–1221.
[57] Hada-helicopter adaptive aircraft, [Online, cited 5 December 2017] (n.d.). URL
https://www.embention.com/en/projects/hada-helicopter-adaptive-aircraft/.
[58] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Jean Claude Gonnin, 2013, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v¼u3yvhK3f364.
[59] D. R. Jenkins, T. Landis, J. Miller, American x-vehicles: An inventory x-1 to x-50
centennial of flight edition.
[60] S. Tayman, Stop-rotor Rotary Wing Aircraft, uS Patent 8,070,090, Dec. 6 2011,
http://www.google.com/patents/US8070090.
[61] S. Pandya, M. Aftosmis, Computation of external aerodynamics for a canard rotor/
wing aircraft, AIAA (2001) 997.
[62] J.E. Low, L.T.S. Win, D.S.B. Shaiful, C.H. Tan, G.S. Soh, S. Foong, Design and
dynamic analysis of a transformable hovering rotorcraft (thor), in: Robotics and
Automation (ICRA), 2017 IEEE International Conference, IEEE, 2017,
pp. 6389–6396.
[63] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Convair Xfy Pogo, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Convair_XFY_Pogo.
[64] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Skytote - the Vtol uav that Transitions into
Horizontal Flight, 2006, http://newatlas.com/skytote-the-vtol-uav-that-
transitions-into-horizontal-flight/5478/.
[65] Flexrotor, [Online] (n.d.). URL http://aerovelco.com/flexrotor/#.
[66] Y. Jung, D.H. Shim, Development and application of controller for transition flight
of tail-sitter uav, J. Intell. Rob. Syst. 65 (1–4) (2012) 137–152.
[67] Aerovel flexrotor vtol uav transition flight tests, Aerovel[cited 5 December 2017].
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼NP3P1Dgos-s.
[68] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], V-bat 3.0 Transition Test Flight, 2009, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v¼UuujWPY3oj8.
[69] D. Kubo, S. Suzuki, Tail-sitter vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aerial
vehicle: transitional flight analysis, J. Aircraft 45 (1) (2008) 292–297.
[70] A. Maqsood, T.H. Go, Study on aerodynamic assisted transition control technique
for versatile uav, in: 47th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Orlando, Florida,
AIAA Paper vol. 60, 2009, p. 2009.
[71] Y. Jung, D.H. Shim, N. Ananthkrishnan, Controller Synthesis and Application to
Hover-to-Cruise Transition Flight of a Tail Sitter uav, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of
Korea, 2010, pp. 305–701.
[72] R. G. N. Ananthkrishnan, H.C. Shim, Controlled near-hover to cruise transition
using a dynamic inversion law, IDeA Research & Development, American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
[73] Z. Omar, C. Bil, R. Hill, The development of a new vtol uav configuration for law
enforcement, in: 2008 Proceedings of International Conference on Mechanical and
Manufacturing Engineering (ICME2008), 2008.
[74] R. Stone, G. Clarke, The t-wing: a vtol uav for defense and civilian applications,
University of Sydney.
[75] H. Stone, K. Wong, Preliminary design of a tandem-wing tail-sitter uav using
multi-disciplinary design optimization, in: AUVSI-proceedings, 1996,
pp. 163–178.
[76] R.H. Stone, P. Anderson, C. Hutchison, A. Tsai, P. Gibbens, K. Wong, Flight testing
of the t-wing tail-sitter unmanned air vehicle, J. Aircraft 45 (2) (2008) 673–685.
[77] R.D. Fisher, China reveals Data on Vd200 Flying-wing Vtuav [Online, cited 1
December 2015], March 2016, http://www.janes.com/article/59105/china-
reveals-data-on-vd200-flying-wing-vtuav.
[78] S. Shkarayev, J.-M. Moschetta, B. Bataille, Aerodynamic design of micro air
vehicles for vertical flight, J. Aircraft 45 (5) (2008) 1715–1724.
[79] M. Aksugur, G. Inalhan, Design methodology of a hybrid propulsion driven
electric powered miniature tailsitter unmanned aerial vehicle, J. Intell. Rob. Syst.
57 (1–4) (2010) 505–529.
[80] D. D. Sander Hulsman, Jurjen de Groot, Atmos uav, Leonardo Times.
[81] M. Hochstenbach, C. Notteboom, B. Theys, J. De Schutter, Design and control of
an unmanned aerial vehicle for autonomous parcel delivery with transition from
vertical take-off to forward flight–vertikul, a quadcopter tailsitter, Int. J. Micro Air
Veh. 7 (4) (2015) 395–405.
[82] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Google Drones Tested in Queensland, 2014,
http://www.suasnews.com/2014/08/30892/google-drones-tested-in-
queensland/.
[83] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Google Working on New Drone after Wing
Design Failed, 2015, http://www.suasnews.com/2015/03/34798/google-
working-on-new-drone-after-wing-design-failed/.
[84] [Online, cited 5 December 2017], Sikorsky's Rotor Blown Wing - Look Familiar?,
2013, http://aviationweek.com/blog/sikorskys-rotor-blown-wing-look-familiar.
[85] Tara, Interview with the Inventors of the Quadshot a Remote Controlled Aircraft
[Online, cited 5 December 2017], 2012, http://ideasuploaded.com/2012/08/10/
interview-with-the-inventors-of-the-quadshot-a-remote-controlled-aircraft/.
[86] B. Coxworth, Quadshot Rc Aircraft Combines Quadricopter Hovering with
Airplane Flight [Online, cited 5 December 2017], August 2011, http://www.
gizmag.com/quadshot-hovers-andflies/19449/.
A.S. Saeed et al.
[87] B. Theys, G. De Vos, J. De Schutter, A control approach for transitioning vtol uavs
with continuously varying transition angle and controlled by differential thrust,
in: Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2016 International Conference, IEEE,
2016, pp. 118–125.
[88] B. Theys, J. De Schutter, Parameter selection method and performance assessment
for the preliminary design of electrically powered transitioning vtol uavs, in:
Proceedings of IMAV 2016, vol. 2016, pp. 221–228.
[89] X. Fang, Q. Lin, Y. Wang, L. Zheng, Control Strategy Design for the Transitional
Mode of Tiltrotor uav, in: 2012 10th IEEE International Conference on Industrial
Informatics (INDIN), IEEE, 2012, pp. 248–253.
[90] F. Kendoul, I. Fantoni, R. Lozano, Modeling and control of a small autonomous
aircraft having two tilting rotors, in: 2005 and 2005 European Control Conference,
44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, CDC-ECC’05, IEEE, 2005,
pp. 8144–8149.
[91] D.A. Ta, I. Fantoni, R. Lozano, Modeling and control of a tilt tri-rotor airplane, in:
American Control Conference, 2012, pp. 131–136.
[92] C. Papachristos, A. Tzes, Modeling and control simulation of an unmanned tilt tri-
rotor aerial vehicle, in: 2012 IEEE International Conference on Industrial
Technology (ICIT), IEEE, 2012, pp. 840–845.
[93] G. Flores, R. Lozano, Transition flight control of the quad-tilting rotor convertible
mav, in: 2013 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS),
IEEE, 2013, pp. 789–794.
[94] C. Abdollahi, Aerodynamic Analysis and Simulation of a Twin-tail Tilt-duct
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Ph.D. thesis, 2010.
[95] J. Abras, R. Narducci, Analysis of cfd modeling techniques over the mv-22
tiltrotor, in: American Helicopter Society 66th Annual Forum, 2010, pp. 11–13.
[96] K.M. Kleinhesselink, Stability and Control Modeling of Tiltrotor Aircraft, Ph.D.
thesis, University of Maryland, College Park, 2007.
[97] O. Tekinalp, T. Unlu, I. Yavrucuk, Simulation and flight control of a tilt duct uav,
in: 2009 AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference, 2009,
pp. 10–13. Chicago, IL.
[98] A. Bhanja Chowdhury, A. Kulhare, G. Raina, A generalized control method for a
tilt-rotor uav stabilization, in: 2012 IEEE International Conference on Cyber
Technology in Automation, Control, and Intelligent Systems (CYBER), IEEE, 2012,
pp. 309–314.
[99] G. Flores, R. Lozano, A nonlinear control law for hover to level flight for the quad
tilt-rotor uav, in: World Congress, vol. 19, 2014, pp. 11055–11059.
[100] S. Park, J. Bae, Y. Kim, S. Kim, Fault tolerant flight control system for the tilt-rotor
uav, J. Franklin Inst. 350 (9) (2013) 2535–2559.
[101] A. Bhanja Chowdhury, A. Kulhare, G. Raina, Back-stepping control strategy for
stabilization of a tilt-rotor uav, in: 2012 24th Chinese Control and Decision
Conference (CCDC), IEEE, 2012, pp. 3475–3480.
€
[102] K. T. Oner, E. Çetinsoy, E. Sırımo
glu, C. Hancer, T. Ayken, M. Ünel, Lqr and smc
stabilization of a new unmanned aerial vehicle.
[103] E. Çetinsoy, S. Dikyar, C. Hançer, K. Oner, E. Sirimoglu, M. Unel, M. Aksit, Design
and construction of a novel quad tilt-wing uav, Mechatronics 22 (6) (2012)
723–745.
[104] T. Ostermann, J. Holsten, Y. Dobrev, D. Moormann, Control concept of a tiltwing
uav during low speed manoeuvring, in: Proceeding of the 28th International
Congress of the Aeronautical Sciences: ICAS Brisbane, Australia, 2012.
[105] A. Vargas-Clara, S. Redkar, Dynamics and control of a stop rotor unmanned aerial
vehicle, Int. J. Electr. Comput. Eng. 2 (5) (2012) 597–608.
[106] A. V. Clara, S. Redkar, Dynamics of a vertical takeoff and landing (vtol) unmanned
aerial vehicle (uav) , International Journal of Engineering Research & Innovation,
3(1).
[107] M.E. Argyle, R.W. Beard, S. Morris, The vertical bat tail-sitter: dynamic model and
control architecture, in: American Control Conference (ACC), 2013, IEEE, 2013,
pp. 806–811.
[108] A. Frank, J. McGrew, M. Valenti, D. Levine, J.P. How, Hover, Transition, and Level
Flight Control Design for a Single-propeller Indoor Airplane, Defense Technical
Information Center, 2007.
[109] K. Wong, J.A. Guerrero, D. Lara, R. Lozano, Attitude stabilization in hover flight of
a mini tail-sitter uav with variable pitch propeller, in: IEEE/RSJ International
Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE, 2007, pp. 2642–2647.
[110] J.T. VanderMey, A Tilt Rotor uav for Long Endurance Operations in Remote
Environments, Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011.
[111] A. Manouchehri, H. Hajkarami, M. Ahmadi, Hovering control of a ducted fan vtol
unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) based on pid control, in: 2011 International
Conference on Electrical and Control Engineering (ICECE), 2011, pp. 5962–5965,
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICECENG.2011.6057155.
[112] J.A. Guerrero, R. Lozano, G. Romero, D. Lara-Alabazares, K. Wong, Robust control
design based on sliding mode control for hover flight of a mini tail-sitter
unmanned aerial vehicle, in: 35th Annual Conference of IEEE, Industrial
Electronics, IECON’09, IEEE, 2009, pp. 2342–2347.
[113] N.B. Knoebel, T.W. McLain, Adaptive quaternion control of a miniature tailsitter
uav, in: American Control Conference, 2008, IEEE, 2008, pp. 2340–2345.
105
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 98 (2018) 91–105
[114] S. Kohno, K. Uchiyama, Design of Robust Controller of Fixed-wing uav for
Transition Flight, in: 2014 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft
Systems (ICUAS), IEEE, 2014, pp. 1111–1116.
[115] S. R. Osborne, Transitions between hover and level flight for a tailsitter uav.
[116] P.-R. Bilodeau, F. Wong, Modeling and control of a hovering mini tail-sitter, Int. J.
Micro Air Veh. 2 (4) (2010) 211–220.
[117] P. Casau, D. Cabecinhas, C. Silvestre, Autonomous transition flight for a vertical
take-off and landing aircraft, in: 2011 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and
Control and European Control Conference (CDC-ECC), IEEE, 2011,
pp. 3974–3979.
[118] J. Escareno, S. Salazar-Cruz, R. Lozano, Attitude stabilization of a convertible mini
birotor, in: Computer Aided Control System Design, 2006 IEEE International
Conference on Control Applications, IEEE, 2006, pp. 2202–2206.
[119] J. Escareno, S. Salazar, R. Lozano, Modeling and control of a convertible vtol
aircraft, in: 45th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Citeseer, San Diego,
California, 2006, pp. 13–15.
[120] J. Escareno, A. Sanchez, O. Garcia, R. Lozano, Modeling and global control of the
longitudinal dynamics of a coaxial convertible mini-uav in hover mode, in:
Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Springer, 2009, pp. 261–273.
[121] P. Casau, D. Cabecinhas, C. Silvestre, Hybrid control strategy for the autonomous
transition flight of a fixed-wing aircraft, IEEE Trans. Contr. Syst. Technol. 21 (6)
(2013) 2194–2211.
[122] T. Matsumoto, K. Kita, R. Suzuki, A. Oosedo, K. Go, Y. Hoshino, A. Konno,
M. Uchiyama, A hovering control strategy for a tail-sitter vtol uav that increases
stability against large disturbance, in: 2010 IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE, 2010, pp. 54–59.
[123] J.L. Forshaw, V.J. Lappas, P. Briggs, Transitional control architecture and
methodology for a twin rotor tailsitter, J. Guid. Contr. Dynam. 37 (4) (2014)
1289–1298.
[124] R.H. Stone, Control architecture for a tail-sitter unmanned air vehicle, in: 2004.
5th Asian Control Conference, vol. 2, IEEE, 2004, pp. 736–744.
[125] A. Sanchez, J. Escareno, O. Garcia, R. Lozano, et al., Autonomous hovering of a
noncyclic tiltrotor uav: modeling, control and implementation, in: Proc.. Of the
17th IFAC Wold Congress, 2008, pp. 803–808.
[126] A. Oosedo, A. Konno, T. Matumoto, K. Go, K. Masuko, S. Abiko, M. Uchiyama,
Design and simulation of a quad rotor tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicle, in: 2010
IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII), IEEE, 2010,
pp. 254–259.
[127] B.L. Stevens, F.L. Lewis, Aircraft Control and Simulation, John Wiley & Sons,
2003.
[128] J.P. How, E. Frazzoli, G.V. Chowdhary, Linear Flight Control Techniques for
unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Handbook of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, 2015,
pp. 529–576.
[129] R. Vepa, Flight Dynamics, Simulation, and Control for Rigid and Flexible Aircraft,
CRC Press, 2014, pp. 333–486. Ch. 8.
[130] B. Herisse, F.-X. Russotto, T. Hamel, R. Mahony, Hovering flight and vertical
landing control of a vtol unmanned aerial vehicle using optical flow, in: IEEE/RSJ
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE, 2008,
pp. 801–806.
[131] O. Armutcuoglu, M.S. Kavsaoglu, O. Tekinalp, Tilt duct vertical takeoff and
landing uninhabited aerial vehicle concept design study, J. Aircraft 41 (2) (2004)
215–223.
[132] A. Okan, O. Tekinalp, M. Kavsaoglu, Flight control of a tilt-duct vtol uav, in: AIAA
1st Technical Conference and Workshop on Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles,
Virginia, USA, 2002.
[133] A.J. Koshkouei, A.S. Zinober, Adaptive backstepping control of nonlinear systems
with unmatched uncertainty, in: Proceedings of the 39th IEEE Conference on
Decision and Control, 2000 vol. 5, IEEE, 2000, pp. 4765–4770.
[134] R. D’Sa, D. Jenson, T. Henderson, J. Kilian, B. Schulz, M. Calvert, T. Heller,
N. Papanikolopoulos, Suav: Q-an improved design for a transformable solar-
powered uav, in: Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016 IEEE/RSJ
International Conference, IEEE, 2016, pp. 1609–1615.
[135] W. Lu, D. Zhang, J. Zhang, T. Li, T. Hu, Design and implementation of a gasoline-
electric hybrid propulsion system for a micro triple tilt-rotor vtol uav, in: Data
Driven Control and Learning Systems (DDCLS), IEEE, 2017, pp. 433–438, 2017
6th.
[136] K. Wang, S.K. Phang, Y. Ke, X. Chen, K. Gong, B.M. Chen, Vision-aided tracking of
a moving ground vehicle with a hybrid uav, in: Control & Automation (ICCA),
2017 13th IEEE International Conference, IEEE, 2017, pp. 28–33.
[137] B. Nurimbetov, O. Adiyatov, S. Yeleu, H.A. Varol, Motion planning for hybrid uavs
in dense urban environments, in: Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2017
IEEE International Conference, IEEE, 2017, pp. 1627–1632.
[138] W. Saengphet, C. Thumthae, Conceptual design of fixed wing-vtol uav for aed
transport.