Motion planning and stabilization control of a multipropeller multifunction aerial robot

A multipropeller multifunction aerial robot capable of flight and wall climbing is presented in this paper. This novel robot consists of four propellers and two leg-wheel mechanisms. The propellers providing thrust for the vehicle are devoted to the attitude control. Two leg-wheel mechanisms are used for the wall climbing. The dynamic modeling in flight mode is derived in terms of the coupling between the main body and the legs. The wallclimbing mode of the robot falls into wheel-wall-climbing mode and leg-wall-climbing mode, while the latter is the focus of this paper. The kinematic and dynamic modeling, as well as the constraints in leg-wall-climbing mode are investigated. Based on the model, the leg-wall-climbing motion planning is proposed in terms of the constraints. The paper also presents a stabilization control strategy to maintain the attitude stability when the aerial robot is in leg-wall-climbing mode. Simulations of the robot in leg-wallclimbing mode are accomplished to show the effectiveness of the designed stabilization controller at the presence of input disturbances, sensor noise, sensor delays, and parametric modeling errors. A quadrotor subsystem experimental platform is built, and the experimental results support the theoretical analysis.