In this paper, we propose a path planning method allowing a transformable multilinked aerial robot to pass through small openings. The majority of the related studies have used under-actuated and unfoldable multirotors to enable passing through narrow gaps by performing an aggressive motion to compensate for disadvantage of under-actuation. However, this approach is challenging in an unknown environment since an aerial robot needs to run-up and decelerate to perform agile maneuvers. Furthermore, the unfoldable frame cannot allow the robot to squeeze through small openings. To overcome these limitations, we have developed a transformable aerial robot with a multilinked structure in our latest work, along with a motion planning algorithm using a sampling-based method. In spite of the probabilistic completeness, the sampling-based method cannot guarantee the real-time property since the dimension of the configuration space related to the multilinked model is high. Thus, in this work, we apply differential kinematics to achieve instantaneous generation of the valid path by finite numerical integration. To validate our approach, we present an experiment employing a multilinked aerial robot composed from four links to perform online motion planning for a tight horizontal opening and track the desired squeezing trajectory instantaneously.
Path Planning Based on Differential Kinematics for Passing Through Small Opening by Transformable Multilinked Aerial Robot
Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics
International Symposium on Experimental Robotics ; 2018 ; Buenos Aires, Argentina November 05, 2018 - November 08, 2018
Proceedings of the 2018 International Symposium on Experimental Robotics ; Chapter : 46 ; 536-548
2020-01-23
13 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English