More than meets the eye: A hybrid-locomotion robot with rotary flight and wheel modes

Mobility in small ground robots is often improved by novel mechanisms or wheel designs. This can be successful when navigating rough terrain or climbing small obstacles. However, few such robots are capable of scaling obstacles of arbitrary height or traversing all types of terrain. This paper presents a concept for a miniature robot that combines wheeled ground locomotion with rotary-wing flight capabilities, which has the potential to offer the best features of both helicopters and ground vehicles while addressing the aforementioned challenges to mobility. A proof-of-concept robot has been designed to test this concept. In its ground mode, it is based loosely on the University of Minnesota's Scout line of robots. It transitions from its ground mode to its flight mode by positioning itself on-end, unfolding rotors from its body, and taking off. A full prototype of the design has been constructed and the concept has been shown to be feasible, but the design requires refinement before it is fully functional and robust. Test results from a focused ground-mode-only prototype and the miniature helicopter on which the flight mode is based provide estimates of the robot's performance where data could not be obtained from the full prototype. The results show that, while it is capable of the desired functions, more work is required before the concept can reach its full potential.