A Mobile Landing Platform for Miniature Vertical Take-Off and Landing Vehicles

Author

Dalamagkidis, K. ; Ioannou, S. ; Valavanis, K. ; Stefanakos, E.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci. & Eng., Univ. of South Florida, Tampa, FL

fYear

2006

fDate

28-30 June 2006

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

Miniature vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles have limited range of operations mainly due to their limited payload capacities and power availability. To increase this range, a modified unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) is used to transport the VTOL to its target area serving as an on-site take-off/landing and possibly refueling base. A gimbaled landing platform design is proposed and the necessary equations are derived to level the platform despite of the pose (roll, pitch, yaw) of the UGV. To increase UGV endurance, a solar array is used and solar tracking capabilities for performance maximization are examined. Simulations are carried out to check the validity of the design. The case of an ATRV-Jr as the UGV base and a Raptor 90SE as the VTOL is investigated, but the design is generic enough and suitable for other UGV/VTOL vehicles

Keywords

aerospace robotics; mobile robots; remotely operated vehicles; vectors; UGV endurance; gimbaled landing platform design; miniature VTOL vehicles; mobile landing platform; modified unmanned ground vehicle; vertical landing vehicles; vertical take-off vehicles; Equations; Helicopters; Land vehicles; Payloads; Photovoltaic systems; Remotely operated vehicles; Security; Solar power generation; Surveillance; Unmanned aerial vehicles; ATRV-Jr; UGV; VTOL; gimbal; landing platform; photo-voltaic; solar;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Control and Automation, 2006. MED '06. 14th Mediterranean Conference on

Conference_Location

Ancona

Print_ISBN

0-9786720-1-1

Electronic_ISBN

0-9786720-0-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MED.2006.328767

Filename

4124906