  In this paper, we propose a novel swashplateless-elevon actuation (SEA) for
dual-rotor tail-sitter vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs). In contrast to the conventional elevon actuation (CEA) which
controls both pitch and yaw using elevons, the SEA adopts swashplateless
mechanisms to generate an extra moment through motor speed modulation to
control pitch and uses elevons solely for controlling yaw, without requiring
additional actuators. This decoupled control strategy mitigates the saturation
of elevons' deflection needed for large pitch and yaw control actions, thus
improving the UAV's control performance on trajectory tracking and disturbance
rejection performance in the presence of large external disturbances.
Furthermore, the SEA overcomes the actuation degradation issues experienced by
the CEA when the UAV is in close proximity to the ground, leading to a smoother
and more stable take-off process. We validate and compare the performances of
the SEA and the CEA in various real-world flight conditions, including
take-off, trajectory tracking, and hover flight and position steps under
external disturbance. Experimental results demonstrate that the SEA has better
performances than the CEA. Moreover, we verify the SEA's feasibility in the
attitude transition process and fixed-wing-mode flight of the VTOL UAV. The
results indicate that the SEA can accurately control pitch in the presence of
high-speed incoming airflow and maintain a stable attitude during fixed-wing
mode flight. Video of all experiments can be found in
youtube.com/watch?v=Sx9Rk4Zf7sQ
