The Design and Implementation of Hexa-Rotor Aerial Robot

Abstract

Today, when the robot technology is booming, various sensors and intelligent functions that applied in robots can be transferred and applied to the unmanned aerial robot. It will make the unmanned aerial robot not an ordinary UAV any longer, but an intelligent robot that can fly. Conventional UAVs are not well suited for use in confined spaces, such as small passageways or indoor halls, e.t.c. The multi-rotor copters have the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) ability for indoor flight. The most popular research topics for multi-rotor copters are Quad- copter and Hexa-copter. The objective of this research is to design and build a hexa-rotor aerial robot. We used AVR microcontroller as the flight control system, and use three-axis gyroscope and three-axis accelerometer for attitude sensing of the aerial robot; the flight altitude is estimated with barometric altimeter; the closed loop control of the aerial robot is carried out with PID control to meet the requirements, such as self-balancing, hovering and etc. Multi-sensors had been applied to the hexa-rotor aerial robot, and verified the feasibility with experiments. A universal test platform was designed to test the stability and balance of the Hexa-rotor aerial robot. An external force was applied on the aerial robot from pitch, roll and yaw direction, the aerial robot can return to self-balancing flight quickly. Finally, the hexa-rotor aerial robot can make a stable hovering during the outdoor test fly.