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A new MEMS-based small, light, and cost-effective avionics is proposed in order to improve the current situation of system identification of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which mostly depends on difficult wind tunnel tests. The avionics is capable of gathering navigation, wind, and control input data accurately. Flight tests with a small UAV are conducted, and its longitudinal stability derivatives are obtained accurately using flight data obtained by the avionics and system identification techniques.

A prototype tail-sitter mini unmanned aerial vehicle (SkyEyeV) was developed and tested in a wind tunnel and by remotely controlled flight. A tail-sitter is an aircraft that takes off and lands on its tail section with its fuselage pointing upward. The prototype is powered by twin electric motors, and has a 1.05 m wingspan and a takeoff weight of 2.4 kg. A key feature of the prototype is leading edge slats, which are designed to avoid stall during high angle of attack transitional flight. Through wind tunnel testing, the slats were confirmed to increase the stall angle of attack not only in a non-powered condition (without propeller) but also in a powered condition (wing in propeller slipstream). The remotely piloted flight tests verified the vehicle's designed flight capability, transition and hovering, and several useful insights were obtained.