Are Tilt Quadrotors More Energy-Efficient Than Conventional Quadrotors? A Preliminary Study

This paper studies the energy-saving potentials of tilt-rotor drones under the presence of wind disturbances. Owing to the symmetry of the problem, a mathematical model including simple computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis-based aerodynamics is first presented. To deal with the minimum energy problem, a minimum energy super-twisting algorithm (STA) is used for stabilization around any desired pitch angle, while the extremum-seeking approach is employed to calculate the optimal pitch angle to minimize the consumed energy in real-time. Numerical simulation and comparison studies with both a conventional quadrotor and a tilt-quadrotor stabilized at zero pitch angle show that the proposed method exhibits an interesting potential in terms of energy consumption, thus resulting in the possibility for greater flight durations.