Autonomous Hybrid Ground/Aerial Mobility in Unknown Environments

TL;DR

This paper presents a unified framework for controlling and planning hybrid ground/air vehicles, demonstrating significant energy savings and adaptability in unknown environments.

Contribution

It introduces a control scheme for passive hybrid vehicles, a unified planner using differential flatness, and experimental validation in unknown terrains.

Findings

Hybrid mobility reduces energy consumption by up to five times compared to flying only.

Unified planning effectively manages both rolling and flying modes.

Experimental results validate the framework's effectiveness in unknown environments.

Abstract

Hybrid ground and aerial vehicles can possess distinct advantages over ground-only or flight-only designs in terms of energy savings and increased mobility. In this work we outline our unified framework for controls, planning, and autonomy of hybrid ground/air vehicles. Our contribution is three-fold: 1) We develop a control scheme for the control of passive two-wheeled hybrid ground/aerial vehicles. 2) We present a unified planner for both rolling and flying by leveraging differential flatness mappings. 3) We conduct experiments leveraging mapping and global planning for hybrid mobility in unknown environments, showing that hybrid mobility uses up to five times less energy than flying only.