Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicles are rapidly evolving within the field of robotics. However, their performance is often limited by pay- load capacity, operational time, and robustness to impact and collision. These limitations of aerial vehicles become more acute for missions in challenging environments such as subterranean structures which may re- quire extended autonomous operation in confined spaces. While software solutions for aerial robots are developing rapidly, improvements to hard- ware are critical to applying advanced planners and algorithms in large and dangerous environments where the short range and high suscepti- bility to collisions of most modern aerial robots make applications in realistic subterranean missions infeasible. To provide such hardware ca- pabilities, one needs to design and implement a hardware solution that takes into the account the Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) constraints. This work focuses on providing a robust and versatile hybrid platform that improves payload capacity, operation time, endurance, and versa- tility. The Bi-modal Aerial and Terrestrial hybrid vehicle (BAXTER) is a solution that provides two modes of operation, aerial and terrestrial. BAXTER employs two novel hardware mechanisms: the M-Suspension and the Decoupled Transmission which together provide resilience during landing and crashes and efficient terrestrial operation. Extensive flight tests were conducted to characterize the vehicle’s capabilities, including robustness and endurance. Additionally, we propose Agile Mode Trans- fer (AMT), a transition from aerial to terrestrial operation that seeks to minimize impulses during impact to the ground which is a quick and simple transition process that exploits BAXTER’s resilience to impact.