Yu, Pengfei (The University of Sydney), Chamitoff, Gregory (The University of Sydney), Wong, KC (The University of Sydney)

Perching Upside down with Bi-Directional Thrust Quadrotor

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Air Vehicle Operations" (FrC4), Friday, September 4, 2020, 15:10−15:30, Naousa

2020 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), September 1-4, 2020 (Postponed from June 9-12, 2020), Athens, Greece

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 26, 2024

Abstract

In this paper, we utilized a bi-directional thrust quadrotor with manipulators to mimic a bat's upside-down perching maneuver. This "perch and watch" capability could be beneficial to some specific mission involved extended endurance, such as monitoring wild animals in a natural reserve. This capability also avoids the downwash effect that commonly encountered during an upright perching. The bi-directional thrust is achieved by the dedicated Electric Speed Controller (ESC) firmware which could drive motor bi-directionally during the flight and with nearly symmetric fixed pitch propeller. This method of generating bi-directional thrust has a noticeable delay compared to a variable pitch propeller mechanism, thus a compensation strategy is adopted to minimize the delay in the process of reversing the propeller. So the altitude loss is minimized when a half flip maneuver is conducted. We also noticed that an inverted quadrotor generates more thrust compared to the upright configuration due to frame obstruction, thus controller gains also need to be compensated for accurate trajectory tracking. A customized offboard control method is developed to achieve this perching upside maneuvers with a motion capture system. Finally, a feasible perching trajectory is generated and the test result is presented.