Trans-Rotor: An Active Omnidirectional Aerial-Ground Vehicle With Differential Gear Joint Transformation Mechanism

Abstract

Aerial-ground vehicles have shown great potential in various fields due to their superior mobility and outstanding endurance. However, most of morphing aerial-ground vehicles consider little about controllability and traversability in ground mode. We present a novel aerial-ground vehicle called TransRotor. By proposing a differential gear joint, we equip TransRotor with omnidirectional mobility in both air and ground mode. Besides, using a four-wheel-steering model in ground mode provides better traversability and ground flexibility. Moreover, we design mid-mode transformation for Trans-Rotor, which provides smooth and rapid mode switching. In this work, we firstly propose a novel design of an aerial-ground vehicle. Then, we propose a decoupled controller considering the four-wheel-steer model to achieve autonomous navigation of the vehicle. Comprehensive experiments and a benchmark comparison are carried out to validate the outstanding performance of the proposed system, where the system shows ground flexibility and saves energy up to more than 95%.