Motion Planning and Stabilization Control of a Multipropeller Multifunction Aerial Robot

Abstract

A multipropeller multifunction aerial robot capable of flight and wall climbing is presented in this paper. This novel robot consists of four propellers and two leg-wheel mechanisms. The propellers providing thrust for the vehicle are devoted to the attitude control. Two leg-wheel mechanisms are used for the wall climbing. The dynamic modeling in flight mode is derived in terms of the coupling between the main body and the legs. The wall-climbing mode of the robot falls into wheel-wall-climbing mode and leg-wall-climbing mode, while the latter is the focus of this paper. The kinematic and dynamic modeling, as well as the constraints in leg-wall-climbing mode are investigated. Based on the model, the leg-wall-climbing motion planning is proposed in terms of the constraints. The paper also presents a stabilization control strategy to maintain the attitude stability when the aerial robot is in leg-wall-climbing mode. Simulations of the robot in leg-wall-climbing mode are accomplished to show the effectiveness of the designed stabilization controller at the presence of input disturbances, sensor noise, sensor delays, and parametric modeling errors. A quadrotor subsystem experimental platform is built, and the experimental results support the theoretical analysis.