A Benchmarking Platform and a Control Allocation Method for Improving the Efficiency of Coaxial Rotor Systems

Buzzatto, Joao; Liarokapis, Minas

doi:10.1109/lra.2022.3153999

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(19 reference statements)

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“…The aerial grasping and transportation system is attached to an octacopter with four pairs of coaxial, counter-rotating 16 inches rotors. With a single 6 cells Li-Po battery of 6000 mAh, the particular UAV weighs 3.5 kg, and has a payload capacity of about 10 kg [33]. The vehicle is controlled manually with a radio controller, and the actuators on the reconfigurable grasping and transportation system are controlled Fig.…”

Section: A Experimental Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Adaptive, Reconfigurable, Tethered Aerial Grasping System for Reliable Caging and Transportation of Packages

Lin

Buzzatto

Liang

et al. 2022

2022 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR)

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Aerial robot development has gathered steam in recent years for applications such as package delivery and transportation of arbitrary payloads, both in academia and business. However, current solutions for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) based transportation of large objects and/or parcels rely on some form of standardization of packaging. This design constraint greatly limits the applicability of the autonomous package delivery drone concepts. In this paper, we propose a reconfigurable, tethered aerial gripping system that can allow for the execution of a more diverse range of package handling and transportation tasks, employing autonomous aerial robots. The system combines a reconfigurable, telescopic, rectangular frame that is used to conform to the parcel geometry and lift it, and a net system that is used to secure the parcel from the bottom, facilitating the execution of caging grasps. This combination provides reliable aerial grasping and transportation capabilities to the package delivery UAV. The grasping and transportation process used by the proposed concept system can be divided into three stages: i) the reconfigurable, telescopic frame conforms to the parcel geometry securing it, ii) the package is lifted or tilted by the frame's lifting mechanism, exposing its bottom part, and iii) the net is closed, caging and securing the package for transportation. A series of airborne gripping and transportation trials have experimentally validated the system's effectiveness, confirming the viability and usefulness of the proposed concept. Results demonstrate that the prototype can successfully secure and transport a package box. Furthermore, the complete system can be tethered to any type of aerial robotic vehicle.

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Section: A Experimental Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Adaptive, Reconfigurable, Tethered Aerial Grasping System for Reliable Caging and Transportation of Packages

Lin

Buzzatto

Liang

et al. 2022

2022 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR)

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“…The Omnirotor platform [5], [6] is a coaxial [7], ultraversatile, multi-modal, hybrid, tilt-rotor UAV/UGV vehicle, and the first concept to demonstrate the capability of continuous omnidirectional thrust vectoring, meaning it can apply its full thrust in any direction in a continuous, unconstrained manner. This paper presents an improved prototype version of the concept (Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Omnirotor Platform: A Versatile, Multi-Modal, Coaxial, All-Terrain Vehicle

Buzzatto

Liarokapis

2023

IEEE Access

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Mobile and aerial robots offer many potential applications, including warehouse logistics, surveillance, cinematography, and search and rescue. However, most such robots are task-specific and generally need more versatility to tackle multiple scenarios, terrains, and unstructured, dynamic environments. This paper presents the Omnirotor platform, a versatile, multi-modal, coaxial, tilt-rotor, all-terrain vehicle that combines an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) into a hybrid, all-terrain vehicle. The Omnirotor has two locomotion modes of operation (aerial and ground vehicle) and five operation configurations, as it can fly both in the normal and inverted configurations, and it can drive on the ground both in the normal and inverted configurations. It can also recover from any non-operational state to its normal, upside-down configuration. Moreover, in addition to the locomotion modes, the continuous omnidirectional thrust vectoring enables the Omnirotor platform to perform complex manipulation of objects. This work introduces the concept and discusses in detail the design, development, and experimental validation of the Omnirotor platform. In particular, it discusses the modeling and control schemes required by the different operation modes and configurations. It experimentally validates the platform's capabilities with experiments focusing on traversing challenging environments and unstructured, uneven terrains (e.g., a public park). Finally, the platform's ground, pushing-based manipulation capabilities are demonstrated through the execution of a puzzle-solving experiment where the solved puzzle serves as a landing platform for the all-terrain vehicle. The versatility of Omnirotor offers exciting prospects for use in challenging search-and-rescue scenarios, surveillance, and aerial and ground manipulation applications.

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“…Otsuka [34] evaluated the effect of rotor flow interactions on thrust for three two-rotor configurations. Buzzatto [35] designed an open-source benchmarking platform to analyze and improve the efficiency of coaxial rotor systems. Weishupl [36] investigated the interference that arises from overlapping UAV propellers during hovering flight and found that the overlapping region (0-20%) can increase hover flight endurance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Investigation on Thrust Performance of a Small-Scale Staggered Rotor System in Hover

Zhu,

Deng,

Wei

et al. 2023

Drones

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In recent years, the demand for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) has driven the emergence of new aircraft designs, with the Staggered Rotor System being widely applied in these vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Due to the complex aerodynamic interference between rotors, the spacing between them has a significant impact on the performance of these new aircraft configurations. A testbed was designed and validated to investigate the effects of parameters such as axial distance and lateral distance between rotors on the thrust performance of the Staggered Rotor System. A series of systematic thrust tests was conducted on two co-rotating small-scale rotor models, with particular focus on thrust testing of individual rotors in isolation and their comparison to the conditions of the Staggered Rotor System. During the experimental process, as both the axial and lateral distance varied, an orthogonal experimental design was employed to assess the influence of aerodynamic interactions caused by different rotor diameters on rotor performance. This study conducts an analysis of experimental data to investigate the influence of these factors on the performance of rotor systems’ thrust, while also examining the aerodynamic interference and aerodynamic force evolution patterns of rotor systems under varying parameters. Furthermore, rotor speed also plays a crucial role in the performance of the system. Therefore, when designing vertical take-off and landing aircraft with multiple rotors, it is essential to consider the influence of these factors during the optimization process.

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A Benchmarking Platform and a Control Allocation Method for Improving the Efficiency of Coaxial Rotor Systems

Cited by 6 publications

References 15 publications

An Adaptive, Reconfigurable, Tethered Aerial Grasping System for Reliable Caging and Transportation of Packages

An Adaptive, Reconfigurable, Tethered Aerial Grasping System for Reliable Caging and Transportation of Packages

The Omnirotor Platform: A Versatile, Multi-Modal, Coaxial, All-Terrain Vehicle

Experimental Investigation on Thrust Performance of a Small-Scale Staggered Rotor System in Hover

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