Convertible Drone

Convertible MAVs (Micro Air Vehicles) make use of both rotary and fixed wings in order to combine hovering flight capacities associated with rotary-wings aircraft (helicopters, multicopters) and energy efficiency in cruising flight associated with fixed-wings systems (airplanes). We have developed a new type of convertible MAV that essentially consists of a quadrotor structure with two added wings. The two wings can tilt with respect to the quadrotor structure, thus allowing for improved controllability and energy optimization.

A first prototype was built in ISIR Lab, thanks to the means provided by the RTE-UPMC Research Chair on Autonomous Mini-Drones. A picture of this prototype is shown on the left figure below. Based on this design, a patent was filled and funding to improve the concept was provided by the SATT Lutech. This gave rise to a second prototype developed with the support of the company ALCORE Technology.

First prototype, built at ISIR                                                           Second prototype, built with ALCORE Tech.

A first campaign of outdoor flight tests was conducted to validate the concept in operational conditions: capacity of hover flight and cruising flight, capacity to transition between these two modes. The video below illustrates these flight tests.                                          

Related publications :

1.      D.-K. Phung et P. Morin. An Approach for Modeling, Design, and Energy Evaluation of Small Convertible Aerial Vehicles. AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference, 2014.

2.      D. Pucci, T. Hamel, P. Morin, C. Samson. Nonlinear feedback control of axisymmetric aerial vehicles. Automatica, 2015.

3.      D.-K. Phung. Conception, modélisation et commande d’un mini-drone convertible. Thèse de Doctorat, UPMC, 2015.

4.      P. Morin. Modeling and control of micro air vehicles. Int. Workshop on Robot Motion Control (ROMOCO), 2015.

5.      P. Morin, O. Gasté, D.-K. Phung : Véhicule aérien léger sans équipage à décollage vertical. Brevet N° WO2016092102. Date de publication : 16 juin 2016.