All-round two-wheeled quadrotor helicopters with protect-frames for air–land–sea vehicle (controller design and automatic charging equipment)

Abstract

This paper presents a new all-round Air–Land–Sea Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and the automatic battery charging device. The new UAV is a quadrotor helicopter with two rolling protect-frames, which not only can fly in the air but also can move on the ground, the wall, the ceiling, and the water in all directions. In this paper, firstly, the dynamic equation is derived of the new UAV, which is described by a set of nonlinear equations. Secondly, some tracking problems are considered in both the flight mode and the ground one under uncertain inertia parameters, and useful adaptive control systems based on the input–output linearization are proposed for the position tracking control. The design problem is reduced to that of a linear system, and the design method is simple and straightforward. Finally, a new automatic battery charging device is developed for the UAV. It is the unique point that the connection operation to the charging terminal is carried out by ground rolling motion without precise landing from the air. Consequently, even if in windy outdoor and narrow indoor space, the proposed method can complete the battery charge safely and surely.