Stabilizing a vtol freewing testbed vehicle in hover

A freewing aircraft is a vehicle configurations that allows an additional degree-of-freedom in pitch between the fuselage and wing contributing to different dynamics compared to a traditional fixed wing aircraft. The VTOL freewing concept presented by this work may have advantages over traditional VTOL vehicles, while improving pitch responsiveness. This work presents the design of a stability augmentation system (SAS) for stabilizing the freewing vehicle in hover. This controller is then implemented on a fight test vehicle and is used to verify the vehicle is capable of stable flight in the pitch axis. Ground test results show that a conventional stability augmentation system is capable of stabilizing the vehicle in hover and points to future potential as a VTOL concept.