CN114393965A - A self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal vehicle - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention discloses an automatically-folded air-ground amphibious multi-mode carrying device which is of an upper-layer structure and a lower-layer structure and comprises a flying mechanism, a ground running mechanism and an electronic module; the flight mechanism is arranged on the upper layer and is used for taking charge of vertical take-off and landing, fixed-point hovering and aerial flight of the device under the control of the electronic module; the ground running mechanism is arranged on the lower layer and is used for taking charge of the ground running of the device under the control of the electronic module; and the electronic module is used for controlling the device to carry out ground driving or air flight and independently plan a path according to the control information of the remote controller, and is also used for transmitting the whole information of the device back to the ground. The invention integrates the rotor unmanned aerial vehicle and a wheel type mechanism running on the ground into a whole, so that the whole carrying platform has multiple functions of vertical take-off and landing, fixed-point hovering, vertical obstacle crossing, silent approach and the like, and has corresponding functions of active obstacle avoidance, automatic return and the like.

Description

A self-folding land-air amphibious multimodal vehicle

technical field

The invention relates to the technical field of transportation tools, in particular to an automatic folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device.

Background technique

With the development of UAV technology, the arrangement of multi-rotor UAV arms has become more and more diverse, and the forms of land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier devices are also diversified. There are relatively few carriers that can automatically fold the arms, and the arms are folded on both sides of the fuselage without interfering with each other, and at the same time can be integrated control of land and air and amphibious, and one-click switching between two modes of the carrier device is rare, so here In the folding state, the arms can be automatically retracted on both sides of the fuselage. At the same time, the arms do not interfere with each other during the retraction process. The flight mode and the ground driving mode can be switched with one key, and the two modes can be switched. The control of the device is differentiated to ensure that the flight mechanism is in a dormant state when the device is driving on the ground, and the dangerous phenomenon of sudden wing rotation will not occur.

In the field of land and air amphibious vehicles, the amphibious vehicles using traditional chassis have complex structures and generally large mass, so that the load-to-load ratio of the amphibious vehicles equipped with traditional drive chassis is not high. Therefore, the present invention is designed for the entire carrier platform. A light-weight chassis is developed, which increases the overall load-to-load ratio of the device to 16% on the premise of meeting ground drive requirements.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The purpose of the present invention is to overcome the defects of the prior art, and propose an automatic folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier platform.

In order to achieve the above purpose, the present invention proposes an automatic folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device, the device is an upper and lower structure, including a flight mechanism, a ground travel mechanism and an electronic module; wherein,

The flight mechanism is arranged on the upper layer, and is used for the vertical take-off and landing, fixed-point hovering and aerial flight of the device under the control of the electronic module;

The ground running mechanism is arranged on the lower layer and is used for the ground running of the device under the control of the electronic module;

The electronic module is used to control the device to travel on the ground or fly in the air according to the control information of the remote controller and to plan a path autonomously, and is also used to transmit the overall information of the device to the ground.

As an improvement of the above device, the fuselage of the flying mechanism is a box-type structure as a whole, including the body and four foldable arms distributed on the four corners of the box-type fuselage. Includes locking to unfold and fold into place.

As an improvement of the above device, the locking deployment is realized by a locking mechanism installed on each machine arm.

As an improvement of the above device, the folding in place is that the two front arms are folded obliquely upward, and the two rear arms are folded forward horizontally, and the power is provided by the dual-axis steering gear.

As an improvement of the above device, the ground running mechanism includes a chassis main body and four sets of independent suspensions and tires.

As an improvement of the above device, the device further includes a remote controller for manual intervention on the movement of the device, including the deployment and retraction of the machine arm, the retraction and retraction of the locking mechanism, the flight of the device and the movement of the device. ground driving.

As an improvement of the above device, the electronic module includes a ground motion control module, a flight motion module, an environment perception module, a decision planning module, a mode switching module, a power supply module and a communication module; wherein,

The ground motion control module is installed on the chassis of the ground travel mechanism, and is used to control the forward, backward and turning of the device;

The flight motion module is installed in the center of the flight mechanism, and is used to control the device to complete various flight actions;

The environment perception module is used to collect external environment information of the location of the device, including image information, sound information and three-dimensional space information, and the environment perception module includes a plurality of surround-view cameras and a lidar deployed on the top of the flight mechanism;

The decision-making module is used to perform decision-making processing according to the information collected by the environment perception module when the device performs autonomous path planning, and transmit the corresponding execution actions to the ground motion control module and the flight motion module;

The mode switching module is used to control the ground traveling mechanism to work on the ground or the flight mechanism to fly in the air, and is also used to control the ground traveling mechanism to unfold or fold the arms while walking;

the power supply module is used to supply power to the device; the decision planning module, the mode switching module and the power supply module are all installed on the upper surface of the chassis between the upper and lower layers;

The communication module is installed in the flight mechanism and used to realize the communication between the device and the ground.

As an improvement of the above device, the processing process of the decision module specifically includes:

When the device performs autonomous path planning, it builds a map synchronously according to the visual information collected by the surround-view camera and the point cloud image collected by the lidar, completes the 3D path planning, and transmits the corresponding execution actions to the ground motion control module and the flight motion module.

As an improvement of the above device, the ground motion control module includes an ESC, and the flight motion control module includes GPS, inertial navigation, VCU control board and power distribution board.

Compared with the prior art, the advantages of the present invention are:

1. The present invention integrates the rotary-wing UAV and the wheeled mechanism for driving on the ground, so that the upper and lower parts are integrated, so that the entire carrier platform has the functions of vertical take-off and landing, fixed-point hovering, climbing over vertical obstacles, silent approach, etc. The platform has a variety of functions, and has a certain degree of intelligence, such as active obstacle avoidance, automatic return and other corresponding functions;

2. The present invention reduces the size of the whole device running on the ground, and at the same time makes reasonable use of the space above the device, so that the size of the device in the top view plane is smaller, and the entire device can pass through the narrow space in the ground running mode. , such as narrow doors and windows and aisles, etc., the installation ground has better passability. Since the arm is automatically folded, it only needs to be switched with one key when it needs to be folded, which greatly increases the operability of the device;

3. The folding method of the present invention not only reduces the movement interference of the front and rear arms, but also increases the safety of the device during the folding process, and more fully utilizes the space in the vertical direction of the platform, making the lateral size of the vehicle smaller, and the folded platform structure. more compact;

4. The present invention locks the stretched and folded arms through the locking mechanism, which increases the operating safety of the platform in the flight mode, and can effectively reduce the working pressure of the dual-axis steering gear. At the same time, the arm locking form of the present invention is more friendly to locking the steering gear, and the final pressure is borne by the steel bolt instead of being transmitted to the single-axis locking steering gear, which reduces the working pressure of the single-axis steering gear and increases the the life of the entire power system;

5. The sensing device carried by the present invention can collect and return the surrounding environment information, and can also complete synchronous map construction, can complete the construction of a three-dimensional point cloud map on the ground, can conduct aerial reconnaissance, and collect scene information;

6. The decision-making planning module of the present invention can complete autonomous behavior according to the graphic information collected by external sensors, so that the device can make decisions autonomously even when the ground control signal is lost, and complete functions such as active obstacle avoidance and automatic return to home, so that the device can be Reduce losses in the face of emergencies;

7. The present invention achieves weight reduction on the premise of ensuring that the overall strength of the platform remains unchanged, and can achieve a load ratio of 16%, which provides conditions for carrying more mission loads in the future.

Description of drawings

Fig. 1 is the structure diagram of the self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device of the present invention;

Fig. 2 is the electronic module composition block diagram of the device of the present invention;

Fig. 3 is the schematic diagram of upper flight mechanism;

Fig. 4 is the schematic diagram of the arm folding of the upper flight mechanism;

Figure 5 is a front view of the ground travel mechanism;

Fig. 6 is a bottom view of the ground running mechanism.

Detailed ways

On the basis of realizing the functions of flying in the air and traveling on the ground, the invention realizes the automatic folding of the machine arm and the autonomy of the whole vehicle traveling. As shown in Figure 1, when the arm is unfolded, the wheelbase is 1150mm, the overall size of the platform is 1275mm×1275mm×435mm, and the dimensions of the entire platform after the arm is folded are 680mm×670mm×500mm. It can pass through smaller spaces such as doors and windows, narrow mountain roads, etc. The whole device has a dead weight of 25.5kg and can carry a 4.5kg load for vertical take-off and landing. It can overcome obstacles that are difficult to overcome by a wheeled chassis, such as wild swamps, lakes, gravel hills and other complex ground conditions. It can complete synchronous mapping when matched with on-board equipment. and 3D Astar's path planning tasks. It can perform various tasks such as urban rescue, surveillance, terrain detection, patrol, fire rescue, and reconnaissance.

The technical solutions of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and embodiments.

Example 1

As shown in FIG. 1 , Embodiment 1 of the present invention proposes an automatically foldable land and air amphibious multi-modal carrier platform. By coupling the wheeled chassis responsible for ground driving and the quadrotor responsible for air flight together, the complete A mission that combines both aerial and ground travel functions. The whole platform is composed of main hardware and various electronic modules.

The main hardware can be roughly divided into upper and lower layers. The upper layer is the flight mechanism including the body and four foldable arms; the lower layer is the ground travel mechanism, including the chassis main body and four sets of independent suspensions and tires. The electronic module, as shown in Figure 2, includes a motion control module, an environment perception module, a decision planning module, a mode switching module, a power supply module, and a communication module. The motion control module includes a ground motion control module and a flight motion module. The ground motion control module is installed on the lower chassis; the flight motion module is installed in the center of the upper flight mechanism; the environment perception module includes a surround-view camera and lidar; the former is installed in The latter is installed on the top of the device at the front of the device; the decision-making module, the mode switching module and the power module are all installed on the upper surface of the chassis between the upper and lower layers; the communication module is installed on the upper layer.

The upper layer is mainly responsible for the vertical take-off and landing, vertex hovering and other aerial flight tasks of the entire device; the lower layer is responsible for the ground driving of the entire device. The ground motion control module mainly controls the forward, backward and turning of the chassis; the flight motion module is responsible for the device completing various flight actions when performing aerial tasks, including resisting the interference of the external environment without affecting the completion of the established actions, such as the disturbance of natural wind. The environment perception module is responsible for collecting the external environment information of the location of the device, such as image information, sound information, three-dimensional space information, etc.; the decision-making module is used for the perception of the device when the device performs autonomous path planning. The information transmitted by the module is comprehensively processed, and then the corresponding execution actions are transmitted to the ground motion control module or the flight motion module; the mode switching module is responsible for controlling the unfolding and folding of the arm, and at the same time controls the control information transmitted by the remote control to the device. For example, when the remote control is switched to ground mode, the remote control information only controls the chassis of the device. When the remote control is switched to flight mode, the remote control signal only controls the upper flight mechanism. The switching module also integrates the control of the upper and lower layers into a remote controller, so that two operating modes of the device can be controlled on one remote controller. At the same time, the mode switching module can control the ground to expand or fold the arm while walking; the power supply The module is responsible for supplying power to the upper and lower layers and each module; the communication module ensures the communication between the whole device and the ground control personnel.

The upper flight mechanism is a quadrotor with automatic arm folding. The entire upper flight module can be divided into: flight main structure, flight power module, flight controller module, electronic governor module and various wiring harnesses.

The components of the upper flight main structure mainly include box-type fuselage, square spacer, 35mm fixed pipe clamp, positive part, upper bearing end cover, lower bearing end cover, bearing, dual-axis steering gear, upper steering gear cage, lower rudder Machine cage, U-shaped tube clamp, carbon tube arm, square steering gear fixing block, integrated motor, etc. The overall composition of the upper flight mechanism is shown in Figure 3.

The fuselage of the upper flight mechanism is a box-type structure as a whole. In order to reduce weight, the box-type structure is made of carbon fiber material and has some weight-reducing holes without reducing the strength. The rest of the structural parts are made of 6061 series aluminum alloy.

When the device performs a flight mission, the power supply module supplies power to the flight controller. The flight controller integrates a power distribution board. The power distribution board distributes the power from the battery to the electronic governor mounted on each arm. The speeder supplies power to the motor, and the motor drives the propeller to rotate to provide lift for the entire device.

At the same time, the upper flight module also includes an arm folding module, and four foldable arms are distributed on the four corners of the "box-type fuselage". FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of the folding arm of the upper flight mechanism.

The state of the entire upper flight mechanism after being folded is shown in the figure below. At this time, the front arm is clamped inside, and the rear arm is parked diagonally above. At this time, the latch of the locking mechanism is in the locking hole, and the two arms are locked in the parking position. At this time, the length and width of the upper layer are 680mm×670mm.

The overall appearance of the ground running mechanism is shown in FIG. 5 , and FIG. 6 is a bottom view of the ground running mechanism.

The power is provided by a brushless motor in the center of the car body. The brushless motor is connected to the reducer through the motor base. The output shaft of the reducer is linked with the central differential of the rear axle through a simple universal drive shaft. The rear axle has a central differential to cope with the driving conditions at different speeds on both sides of the rear wheels. The steering of the front wheel is driven by a single-axis steering servo. The single-axis steering servo passes the "parallelogram" mechanism and then transmits the pulling force to the steering cup structure on the side of the wheel through the pull rod to pull the front wheel to steer.

When the chassis is working, the power supply module shared by the upper and lower layers provides 14s power supply. The power supply first supplies power to the ESC of the motor. The ESC receives the remote control command from the receiver and distributes the driving current and voltage to the motor, thereby driving the motor and outputting the power of the motor. A planetary reducer with a reduction ratio of 10 is used to decelerate and increase the torque. The power output from the reducer is transmitted to the rear axle differential through the dog bone drive shaft. The differential distributes the power to the left and right rear wheels. The transfer shaft is transmitted to the rear wheels. The steering steering gear of the front wheel located in front of the middle of the car body is directly powered by the receiver. When the receiver receives the control signal from the remote control, it transmits the signal to the steering gear, and the steering gear drives the rocker arm to swing. After turning the rocker arm, it is transmitted to the left and right wheels to realize the front wheel steering.

The present invention is equipped with a decision planning module, a surround-view camera and a 32-line laser radar, and the placement position is shown in Figure 6. The decision planning module is located above the upper plate of the chassis. The visual information collected by the surround-view camera and the point cloud image collected by the lidar can support the device to complete the synchronous mapping function. At the same time, with the decision planning module and the motion control module, the 3D path planning of the entire device can be completed.

The motion control module is divided into a ground motion control module and a flight control module, which are responsible for the flight state estimation of the entire device, the positioning of ground driving, flight attitude control and stability, and ground flight guidance. The flight control module includes GPS, inertial navigation, VCU control board, distribution board and other corresponding modules, and the ground driving control module is mainly ESC. When the device is running, it cooperates with the sensing equipment, and the external information collected by the sensing equipment is transmitted to the decision-making planning module to build a map. Action accordingly.

Innovation

1. A land-air integrated carrier platform with automatic folding arms is designed, which is mainly equipped with a flight module, a land driving module, a decision-making control module, a perception module, etc., as shown in Figure 2. It can complete ground driving or air flight tasks, and has the ability to plan paths and fly autonomously.

2. Invented a land-air integrated carrier platform with auto-foldable rotor arms, innovatively integrated the automatic folding arms into the land-air amphibious unmanned carrier platform. Under the remote control signal, the folding arms only need A toggle button can do it, getting rid of the traditional way that the arms are not foldable or the arms are manually folded.

3. Perception components such as surround-view camera and millimeter-wave radar are designed and installed. Lidar can obtain target information around the device, providing a hardware foundation for the platform's environmental perception, active obstacle avoidance, and 3D path planning.

4. A decision-making planning module is added to the platform. The decision-making planning module can comprehensively process the information transmitted by the sensor elements and then decide the most suitable path. At the same time, it can detect the overall information of the device, and package the detected information for return. to the ground station.

5. Perform topological optimization analysis on the overall components of the device. After analyzing the specific force of the parts, simulate the force surface and force size, and perform finite element analysis through the software. Retain the material of the force part, which will not be affected. The material with a small force or force is cut off, so that the workpiece can be reduced in weight without affecting the overall strength, and the entire device can reach 16% of the carrying capacity.

6. The present invention only needs to use a remote controller to control various movement modes of the device, such as the deployment and retraction of the arm, the retraction and release of the locking mechanism, the flight of the device, and the ground running of the device. Get rid of the traditional control method of upper and lower layers.

Finally, it should be noted that the above embodiments are only used to illustrate the technical solutions of the present invention and not to limit them. Although the present invention has been described in detail with reference to the embodiments, those of ordinary skill in the art should understand that any modification or equivalent replacement of the technical solutions of the present invention will not depart from the spirit and scope of the technical solutions of the present invention, and should be included in the present invention. within the scope of the claims.

Claims (9)

1. A self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device, characterized in that the device is an upper and lower structure, comprising a flight mechanism, a ground travel mechanism and an electronic module; wherein, The flight mechanism is arranged on the upper layer, and is used for the vertical take-off and landing, fixed-point hovering and aerial flight of the device under the control of the electronic module; The ground running mechanism is arranged on the lower layer and is used for the ground running of the device under the control of the electronic module; The electronic module is used to control the device to travel on the ground or fly in the air according to the control information of the remote controller and to plan a path autonomously, and is also used to transmit the overall information of the device to the ground. 2 . The self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device according to claim 1 , wherein the fuselage of the flight mechanism is a box-type structure as a whole, comprising a body and four corners of the box-type fuselage. 3 . There are four foldable arms on the machine, and the movement states of the arms include locking, unfolding and folding in place. 3 . The self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device according to claim 2 , wherein the locking deployment is realized by a locking mechanism installed on each arm. 4 . 4. The self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device according to claim 2, wherein the folding in place is that two front arms are folded obliquely upward, and two rear arms are folded forward horizontally, and the Two-axis steering gear provides power. 5 . The self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal vehicle according to claim 2 , wherein the ground running mechanism comprises a chassis main body and four sets of independent suspensions and tires. 6 . 6. The self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device according to claim 3, wherein the device further comprises a remote control for manual intervention on the movement of the device, including the Deployment and retraction, retraction of the locking mechanism, flight of the device and ground travel of the device. 7 . The self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device according to claim 1 , wherein the electronic module comprises a ground motion control module, a flight motion module, an environment perception module, a decision planning module, and a mode switching module. 8 . modules, power modules and communication modules; of which, The ground motion control module is installed on the chassis of the ground travel mechanism, and is used to control the forward, backward and turning of the device; The flight motion module is installed in the center of the flight mechanism, and is used to control the device to complete various flight actions; The environment perception module is used to collect external environment information of the location of the device, including image information, sound information and three-dimensional space information, and the environment perception module includes a plurality of surround-view cameras and a lidar deployed on the top of the flight mechanism; The decision-making module is used to perform decision-making processing according to the information collected by the environment perception module when the device performs autonomous path planning, and transmit the corresponding execution actions to the ground motion control module and the flight motion module; The mode switching module is used to control the ground traveling mechanism to work on the ground or the flight mechanism to fly in the air, and is also used to control the ground traveling mechanism to unfold or fold the arms while walking; the power supply module is used to supply power to the device; the decision planning module, the mode switching module and the power supply module are all installed on the upper surface of the chassis between the upper and lower layers; The communication module is installed in the flight mechanism and used to realize the communication between the device and the ground. 8. The self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device according to claim 7, wherein the processing process of the decision-making module specifically comprises: When the device performs autonomous path planning, it builds a map synchronously according to the visual information collected by the surround-view camera and the point cloud image collected by the lidar, completes the 3D path planning, and transmits the corresponding execution actions to the ground motion control module and the flight motion module. 9 . The self-folding land-air amphibious multi-modal carrier device according to claim 7 , wherein the ground motion control module comprises an ESC, and the flight motion control module comprises a GPS, inertial navigation, and VCU control board. 10 . and distribution board.

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