Design of an Energy-Efficient Self-Heterogeneous Aerial-Ground Vehicle

The problem of increasing the operation time and extending the mobility of the limited energy capacity smallsized Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is studied in this paper. This paper presents a hybrid robot design and a simplified energy-efficient locomotion strategy solution that enables ground mobility locomotion for UAVs. The proposed strategy does not require installing motors for ground mobility, however, it exploits the UAV for generating taxiing locomotion. The proposed hybrid robot design, shares important characteristics of 2 heterogeneous types of robots, “Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs)” and “UAVs” for the purpose of exploiting the benefits and mitigating some drawbacks that are associated with each robot type. The design consists of a quadcopter, 2 big freely rotating passive side wheels, 3 small front wheels for ground stabilization, and an autonomous custom braking system onboard.