Modeling and Control of Air-based Actuated Robots

• Main Author: Papadimitriou, Andreas
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Luleå tekniska universitet, Signaler och system 2021
• Subjects: Robotics; Robotteknik och automation
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-83387; http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:isbn:978-91-7790-789-3; http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:isbn:978-91-7790-790-9

The aim of this thesis is to advance and increase the quality of the field of maintenance and exploration with the use of air-based robotic platforms. The fields that will be addressed are focusing on: a) Identification of adhesion system of climbing robots, b) the control of adhesion level and motion of climbing robots, c) the path planning based on constraints posed from platforms’ mobility characteristics and sensor requirements and d) The attitude control of a morphing Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) during in-flight structural re-configurations.Towards this envisioned aim, this thesis will present the following main theoretical contri-butions: a) The development and control of a Thrust Vectoring Vortex Climbing Robot (TVV-CR) which utilizes an Electric Ducted Fan (EDF) for achieving simultaneous locomotion and adhesion without the need of active motorized wheels for traversing surfaces of different ori-entations, b) the design, development, and control of a revised Vortex Robot (VR) based on differential steering platform and the ability to dynamically control the force needed for a con-tinuous adhesion, c) a general modeling methodology, extendable to different adhesion control technologies, of the minimum exerted force of a Climbing Robot (CR) required to achieve ad-hesion regardless of surface orientation d) a set-membership identification and Explicit Model Predictive Control (EMPC) for a Vortex Actuation System (VAS) e) the experimental evalua-tion of the VR under the control framework of an EMPC for the estimated via Autoregressive-Moving-Average with eXternal input (ARMAX) identification VAS f) the formulation of a path planning algorithm for the VR operation under an area coverage scenario while considering the surface characteristics and set inspection specifications. g) the design of a switching Model Predictive Control (MPC) to support the online structural reformation of a foldable quadrotor.In the first part of this thesis, the vision, motivation, open challenges, contributions, and future works are discussed, while in the second part the full articles connected to the presented contributions are presented in the annex.