Aero-robotic vehicles for low-altitude remote-detecting on disaster scene

In this paper, two kinds of subminiature unmanned aero-robotic vehicles (SUAV) including sub-mini fixed-wing aerial vehicles and sub-mini helicopters are presented mainly. The characteristic sizes of these aero-robotic vehicles that are integrated with various micro and mini elements are less than traditional mini unmanned aerial vehicles. The key technologies concerned are aerodynamics for low-Reynolds number, configuration and structure design, dynamic modeling and flight control, navigation and so on, which are briefly introduced in the paper. Trial flights indicated that the two kinds of SUAVs can stably and clearly transmit the real-time image from the air to ground, when the cruising velocity in the air is equal or more than 10 m/s. Especially, the sub-mini helicopters have a detecting ability hanging in the air under wind scale 3-4.