Abstract
This paper presents the result of the high performance prop-hanging flight control using quaternions. Prop-hanging flight is known as a way of flight for the fixed-wing aircraft, and it can achieve hovering without special equipments to change the direction of the thrust. We had already succeeded in stabilizing the aircraft during prop-hanging flight using LQI controllers based on the mathematical model. However, a high degree of freedom flight control could not be performed because Euler angles which may cause gimbal lock were used to represent the attitude of the aircraft. In this paper, we utilize quaternions to achieve a high degree of freedom flight control during prop-hanging flight. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated by experiments.
