Design and Control of SeparaTrek: A Hybrid Aerial-Ground Robot with Separable and Combinative Locomotion Parts

Abstract

The hybrid aerial-ground robots combine ground mobility and aerial flight capability, which are often designed for executing multi-terrain tasks. However, most of the existing hybrid aerial-ground robots integrate the ground and aerial functionality into one single whole system. This leads to functional coupling that prevents the full utilization of multimodal locomotion capabilities. In this paper, we design a hybrid aerial-ground robot called SeparaTrek. SeparaTrek features separable and combinative ground and aerial locomotion parts by a free separation and combination structure, reducing the coupling relationship between ground and aerial functionality. Furthermore, we design a multimodal locomotion controller based on extended Kalman filter algorithm and adaptive sliding mode control, achieving stable locomotion of SeparaTrek on complex and variable terrain. Through experiments, it is demonstrated that SeparaTrek’s design is rational and its motion is stable.