Scalable Highly Maneuverable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles v2.0 for Confined Spaces.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Unmanned vehicles have been used in natural and accidental emergencies, and diverse missions sometimes with success, but more often just confirming their potential. Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs), in particular, are autonomous aerial robots that are driving growth in the aerospace industry and revolutionizing many commercial and civil sectors. Despite their relative success a number of developments must be realized before the full potential of UAS can be realized. Based on my previous UAS developments in the area of highly maneuverable UAS capable of performing maneuvers at zero speed, the proposed research will develop a number of robotic modules targeted to enable UAS to effectively move semi-autonomously and autonomously within confined, structured or unstructured, spaces, at low altitudes, in close proximity to infrastructure, and at high speeds where no GPS is available and where effective real-time sense and avoid tasks must be performed. The developments to be performed within Dr. Ramirez-Serrano’s UAS program in the next 5 years include a next generation portable and scalable heavy lift highly maneuverable Vertical Take-Off and Landing UASs for helicopter impenetrable environments having the ability to perform work via on-board robot arms. Such developments will be based on previous UAV prototypes that have been successfully developed. Specifically, we will use a scalable twin shrouded-propeller VTOL UAV for operations in highly confined spaces. The goal is to extend the current capabilities of recently developed UAS, which are capable of performing maneuvers that no other aircraft can execute, to enable them to perform such maneuvers within a priori unknown highly confined spaces such as collapsed buildings, mines, and within the three canopy or urban and industrial entrapments. To make this possible, the UASs will include enhanced versions of previously developed tools an algorithms such as: i) 3D navigation and sensing mechanisms for confined urban and natural environments; ii) Robust adaptive controllers capable of changing the attitude of the UAS despite disturbances; and iii) Thrust vectoring mechanisms via tilting shrouded-propellers. The primary reasons for using shrouded-props are: 1) Increased thrust by 50%-70% when compared to a free prop of the same diameter; 2) Reduced Noise - A properly designed shrouded-prop is half as loud as a free prop; and 3) Improved Safety. The proposed UAS will be further enhanced with robotic arms to perform useful work. The target applications focus on a number of critical operations such as pipeline leak detection, urban search & rescue, infrastructure inspection/maintenance, and policing aimed at supporting Civil Protection Agencies, Fire brigades and EMS. The proposed work targets two scientific areas, namely i) system architecture, and ii) sensing, navigation, control and coordination.