A small hybrid ground-air vehicle concept

Small robots benefit from the ability to go places where humans cannot and are attractive for numerous practical reasons such as portability and manufacturing simplicity. However, with smaller scale comes more difficulty traversing rough terrain, especially for robots which use wheel-based locomotion. Previous approaches to overcome this drawback have included auxiliary mechanisms such as jumping, transformations of the robot or its appendages, and alternative forms of locomotion such as aerial flight capability. This paper presents a small scale robot that is capable of both ground travel and aerial flight. In combination, these methods of locomotion allow for efficient ground-based movement as well as the ability to overcome obstacles and explore otherwise unreachable locations through air travel. The novel aspect of the robot design is a transformation between ground and air configurations. This feature offers advantages over previous approaches such as a highly compact ground configuration and protection of delicate flight hardware when not in use. In this paper, the robot concept is compared to other approaches to address ground robot mobility drawbacks. This is followed by a detailed design description with a focus on the transformation between the ground and air modes. Lastly, a fully functional prototype is presented which is capable of ground and air locomotion and the transformation between these configurations.