A Preliminary Experimental Analysis of V-tail Quad-Rotor Dynamics

Standard quad-rotors are the most common and versatile Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) thanks to their simple control and mechanics. However other configurations with distinct capabilities exist. We present a preliminary systematic study of an alternative configuration known as V-tail, which is still mechanically simple, with four fixed rotors, but whose back rotors are tilted by a known angle. Mathematical modelling and field experiments suggest that this configuration is able to achieve better performance in manoeuvring control, while losing some power only in the stationary hovering task. In addition, these increases in performance are obtained with the same attitude control of the standard quad-rotor, making this configuration very easy to setup.