Pitch and Thrust Allocation for Full-Flight-Regime Control of Winged eVTOL UAVs

Trajectory tracking control for winged eVTOL aircraft is complicated by the high-angle-of-attack aerodynamics experienced during navigational flight occurring immediately after takeoff and immediately before landing. The total energy use of the vehicle can be reduced and the control performance can be improved by appropriately considering the pitch angle of the vehicle in varying flight conditions. We present a review of high-angle-of-attack aerodynamic models as well as an algorithm for finding the optimal pitch and thrust of a winged eVTOL throughout its flight regime. We show simulation results demonstrating a 75% reduction in tracking error over our previous work while maintaining a similar average thrust and an 85% reduction in tracking error over using a multirotor-like controller. The results show that the method is robust to modeling error in the stall characteristics.