The increasingly complex urban battlefield calls for Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) capable of performing missions combining the speed of horizontal flight and the precision of vertical flight. Towards this end, an aircraft has been developed at ISAE to perform both these missions. The MAVion is a dual motor tilt-body aircraft that has already been demonstrated in horizontal flight. The present effort focuses on modifying the horizontal version for vertical flight. The modifications include replacement of the autopilot hardware, redesign of the control software to make use of the quaternion rotations, and developing composite fabrication of the structure for improved robustness to hard landings. Attempts have also been made to model the complex aerodynamics of propeller slipstream impingement on a wing during transition between vertical and horizontal flight modes. The vertical flight version of the aircraft will be demonstrated during the International MAV competition held in Braunschweig, Germany, July 2010.
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