Controller design and implementation of the transformation/manipulation system of a novel hybrid ground aerial robot

Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of the control system for the transformation/manipulation system that is used in a new Hybrid Ground Aerial Robot (HGAR). The transformation mechanism is used to transform the robot from flying configuration to ground motion configuration and vice versa. The manipulator is attached to one of the four propeller arms to manipulate objects during ground motion. The controller is designed based on feedback linearization method. A simple algorithm is implemented on Arduino board for controlling the angle of the propeller arm with and without manipulator. The angle of the arm is controlled by propeller thrust. The angle of the arm is measured by inertial measurement unit (IMU). The manipulator is controlled by servomotors. The configuration of the manipulator is determined using the joint-angles data and fed to the propeller arm controller to estimate the compensated term. In addition, an integral term is added to the controller to introduce robustness against payload variation and parameters uncertainty. Experimental set up is built to apply the proposed controller on the system and test its accuracy. Finally, the experimental results showed the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed controller.