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The development of a novel terrestrial/aerial robot: autonomous quadrotor tilting hybrid robot

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2023

Daoxun Zhang Open the ORCID record for Daoxun Zhang [Opens in a new window] ,
Ming Xu ,
Pengming Zhu ,
Ce Guo ,
Zhengyu Zhong ,
Huimin Lu  and
Zhiqiang Zheng
Daoxun Zhang
Affiliation:
College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, Hunan, China
Ming Xu*
Affiliation:
College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, Hunan, China
Pengming Zhu
Affiliation:
College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, Hunan, China
Ce Guo
Affiliation:
College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, Hunan, China
Zhengyu Zhong
Affiliation:
College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, Hunan, China
Huimin Lu*
Affiliation:
College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, Hunan, China
Zhiqiang Zheng
Affiliation:
College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, Hunan, China
*
Corresponding authors: Ming Xu, Huimin Lu; Emails: xuming12@nudt.edu.cn, lhmnew@nudt.edu.cn
Corresponding authors: Ming Xu, Huimin Lu; Emails: xuming12@nudt.edu.cn, lhmnew@nudt.edu.cn
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Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) possess fast-moving abilities and have been used in various tasks in the past decades. However, their performances are still restricted by insufficient endurance and confined environments. Intuitively, combining other locomotion modes with UAVs, such as diving and driving, would be an appropriate idea to improve the robot’s adaptability and solve the endurance problem. Recently, the terrestrial/aerial hybrid robots have drawn the researchers’ eyes for their outstanding performances, which can deploy flight mode to traverse insurmountable terrains and ground mode to increase endurance and realize detailed searches. Therefore, this paper developed the autonomous quadrotor tilting hybrid robot (AQT-HR) to achieve terrestrial/aerial dual-modal mobility and verified that the robot delivers high energy efficiency. The AQT-HR can achieve flying and driving through a quadrotor tilting mechanism, which can alter one single driving force into different directions. Furthermore, the dynamic models of the hybrid robot’s aerial and ground locomotion are derived and introduced into the model-feedforward PID control algorithm for improving the robot’s flying stability. Finally, we conducted some mobility tests and experiments about traversing obstacles to demonstrate that the proposed hybrid robot can realize autonomous mode switching and perform a low energy consumption in ground movement mode.

Keywords

mobile robotshybrid robotdual-modal mobilityquadrotor tiltingmode autonomously switching
Type
Research Article
Information
Robotica , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 2024 , pp. 118 - 138
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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