Flight performance characteristics of a modified Quadcopter with and without a wing based on flight test

The endurance of multirotor UAV is restricted due to the inevitable high power consumption on hovering and forward flight. A novel Quadcopter named EMC-pro features a lifting wing in a special setting angle that works together with main rotors to supply lift and thrust when it flies forward, aiming to achieve improvement of endurance and flight range as compared to traditional Quadcopters. The flight performance characteristics of EMC-pro are verified by systematic experiments. The results show that the lifting wing has an insignificant effect on controllability and stability. The Quadcopter with a 30 deg setting angle wing saves 18.97% of the power for maximum endurance at the flight airspeed of 10.1 m/s, and it achieves maximum range at an airspeed of 16.78 m/s, which gains a 6.9% increment compared to the Quadcopter without the wing. With a proper setting angle, the simple combination of a quadcopter and a lifting wing has insignificant effects on flight stability while it improves the maximum endurance much more than the improvement of the maximum range. The lifting wing can be applied to a novel UAV configuration or fixed on an existing multirotor UAV with proper design to enhance flight performance.