The Design of Prometheus: A Reconfigurable UAV for Subterranean Mine Inspection

Brown, Liam; Clarke, R.J.; Akbari, Aliakbar; Bhandari, Ujjar; Bernardini, Sara; Chhabra, P. S.; Marjanović, Ognjen; Richardson, Thomas; Watson, Simon

doi:10.3390/robotics9040095

Cited by 6 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…Brown et al [8], have developed a reconfigurable aerial vehicle with foldable arms for inspecting the works of the mines from one borehole. The small size of the designed drone allows it to achieve this objective and to transport a suitable payload for autonomous missions.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonlinear Robust Control of a New Reconfigurable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

2021

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In this paper, a nonlinear robust Fast Terminal Sliding Mode Controller (FTSMC) is designed to control and stabilize a new reconfigurable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in the presence of uncertain and variable parameters. The studied UAV is an over-actuated system due the number of actuator control inputs. It can modify the length and the angles between its four arms in different ways, which result an important variation in its Center of Gravity (CoG), inertia, and control matrix. The proposed FTSMC offers many advantages such as, reaching the desired states in a finite-time unlike the conventional sliding mode, robustness vis-a-vis uncertain and unknown parameters, fast convergence towards the sliding surface, high accuracy and reducing the chattering phenomena. Furthermore, the closed-loop stability of the this UAV is ensured by the Lyapunov theory. The eight actuators used to rotate and extend the UAV arms are controlled by simple Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controllers. Lastly, the robustness and efficiency of the proposed controller are evaluated through a flight scenario, where the UAV geometric parameters are variable over time.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonlinear Robust Control of a New Reconfigurable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

2021

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“…All-around Aerial Vehicles General purpose aerial vehicles represent another class of aerial vehicle designs that focus on SWaP (Size, weight, and power) constrained exploration challenges. Features of aerial vehicles specialized for exploration in confined spaces include protective cages [18] and reconfiguration for traversal of narrow passages [19]. Furthermore, the scope of aerial vehicle designs spans as far as extra-terrestrial environments [20,21].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

BAXTER: Bi-modal Aerial-Terrestrial Hybrid Vehicle for Long-endurance Versatile Mobility: Preprint Version

Choi¹,

Wee²,

Corah³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Unmanned aerial vehicles are rapidly evolving within the field of robotics. However, their performance is often limited by payload capacity, operational time, and robustness to impact and collision. These limitations of aerial vehicles become more acute for missions in challenging environments such as subterranean structures which may require extended autonomous operation in confined spaces. While software solutions for aerial robots are developing rapidly, improvements to hardware are critical to applying advanced planners and algorithms in large and dangerous environments where the short range and high susceptibility to collisions of most modern aerial robots make applications in realistic subterranean missions infeasible. To provide such hardware capabilities, one needs to design and implement a hardware solution that takes into the account the Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) constraints. This work focuses on providing a robust and versatile hybrid platform that improves payload capacity, operation time, endurance, and versatility. The Bi-modal Aerial and Terrestrial hybrid vehicle (BAXTER) is a solution that provides two modes of operation, aerial and terrestrial. BAXTER employs two novel hardware mechanisms: the M-Suspension and the Decoupled Transmission which together provide resilience during landing and crashes and efficient terrestrial operation. Extensive flight tests were conducted to characterize the vehicle's capabilities, including robustness and endurance. Additionally, we propose Agile Mode Transfer (AMT), a transition from aerial to terrestrial operation that seeks to minimize impulses during impact to the ground which is a quick and simple transition process that exploits BAXTER's resilience to impact.

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“…ARES explores a different part of the design space: online reconstruction with sub-meter accuracy using commodity drones, GPS and Li-DAR. More recent work has explored drone-mounted LiDAR based offline reconstruction of tunnels and mines, but require specialized LiDARs and a human-in-the-loop [7,16] for drone guidance (either manually or by defining a set of waypoints).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Startups promise to deliver models in hours or within a day [4] after drone data collection. This trend has inspired newer, more time-sensitive applications of 3D modeling like (a) postdisaster reconstruction for search and rescue missions [1, 2,5,8,11], (b) construction site monitoring [4], (c) mapping mines, cell-towers and tunnels [7,16], (d) documenting interior office spaces [9], and (e) perhaps, most compelling, between-flight modeling of aircraft fuselages or blimps to determine structural integrity [38].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Though startups are starting to promise smaller reconstruction times [7,16], they reconstruct 3D models offline i.e., after the drone has landed. Only one company we know of so far promises real-time reconstruction [9], employing a humanoperator holding a hand-held kit with a stereo camera (instead of a drone) to reconstruct interior spaces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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ARES: Accurate, Autonomous, Near Real-time 3D Reconstruction using Drones

Ahmad,

Shin,

Chai

et al. 2021

Preprint

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A 3D model represents an accurate reconstruction of a object. This paper explores the design and implementation of ARES, which provides near real-time, accurate, autonomous reconstruction of 3D models using a drone-mounted LiDAR; such a capability can be useful to document building construction or check aircraft integrity between flights. Accurate reconstruction requires high drone positioning accuracy, and, because GPS can be inaccurate, ARES uses SLAM. However, in doing so it must deal with several competing constraints: drone battery and compute resources, SLAM error accumulation, and LiDAR resolution. ARES uses careful trajectory design to find a sweet spot in this constraint space and a fast reconnaissance flight to narrow the search area for structures, and offloads SLAM to the cloud by streaming compressed LiDAR data over LTE. It reconstructs buildings to within 10s of cms and incurs less than 100 ms compute latency.

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The Design of Prometheus: A Reconfigurable UAV for Subterranean Mine Inspection

Cited by 6 publications

References 15 publications

Nonlinear Robust Control of a New Reconfigurable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Nonlinear Robust Control of a New Reconfigurable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

BAXTER: Bi-modal Aerial-Terrestrial Hybrid Vehicle for Long-endurance Versatile Mobility: Preprint Version

ARES: Accurate, Autonomous, Near Real-time 3D Reconstruction using Drones

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