Determination of Inertial Characteristics of A High Wing Unmanned Air Vehicle

Abstract: To study the dynamics of an unmanned air vehicle (UAV), prior knowledge about the vehicle's inertial characteristics is essential. An experimental study and detailed analysis has been carried out to determine the centre of gravity (CG) and inertia tensor for a high wing UAV testbed. In this paper, an improved method has been suggested for aircraft inertial characterization in general, and for high wing low cost UAV in particular. To carry out the experiment, complete experimental set-up has been designed and fabricated in-house. The method proposed here, promises to provide superior estimation of inertial characteristics of high wing UAV, compared to the methods cited in the literatures.